Misdirected focus: the case for institutional policy reforms to alcohol supply

                                            To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal,

                                        But sorrow flouted at is double death

Titus Andronicus, Act three, Scene one.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport has recently released a report titled Issues paper relating to the health impacts of alcohol and other drugs in Australia (link here). The report is effectively an interim report and is designed to form the basis of a more comprehensive report assuming the next Government is prepared to renew its terms of reference. While the terms of reference span mainstream society, the report unsurprisingly addresses Indigenous issues at various points.

Like most Parliamentary reports of this nature, this Issues Paper carefully navigates its way through what is a complex and at times prickly thicket. Its value in the Indigenous policy context is to remind readers of the multitude of ways in which AOD, the report’s acronym for alcohol and other drugs, impacts indigenous people and communities. Thus, there is mention of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FASD), criminal justice, numerous health impacts and in passing the potential influence of poor social and environmental infrastructure in driving AOD use and abuse. It is not my intention to seek to summarise the report, but rather I intend to cherry pick a number of propositions as a stepping stone to further discussion.

The report provides an excellent introduction to the overwhelming numbers of research activities, advocacy NGOs and treatment and service providers all operating across the mainstream system.

In the Chapter on AOD services, at paras. 4.19 to 4.36, the report provides an extended discussion of Indigenous issues related to AOD use, relying in large measure on submissions from NACCHO and the Queensland based Institute for Urban Indigenous Health.  These submissions were largely premised on arguments for community-controlled service provision based on evidence that Indigenous people are over-represented in the statistics depicting the adverse impacts of AOD abuse. At para 3.58, the Committee records this plea:

The Institute for Urban Indigenous Health submitted that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led research and evaluation of AOD services must be recognised as a separate, dedicated stream of research and evaluation component of the AOD system. Such an approach would recognise that AOD has a disproportionate effect on Indigenous communities. According to the Institute, more Aboriginal Australians die due to drug and alcohol-related causes than any other disease group, including suicide and cardiovascular illnesses. Among young Aboriginal people aged 15 to 24, alcohol is the number one contributor to the burden of disease.

In a discussion of the links between AOD use and the prison population generally, the report notes (para 459):

People entering adult prison are more than four times as likely to report recent illicit drug use than people in the general community, and seven times more likely to drink to excess, according to the Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales (Legal Aid NSW). Mental health conditions also tend to be over-represented in the prison population.

Given the over-representation of Indigenous citizens in the prison system, these correlations are likely to apply to that subset too.

Chapter Five of the report deals with preventing and reducing harm caused by alcohol and other drugs. This strikes me as the crucial set of issues for policymakers. At para 5.18, the report notes a submission arguing:

 there is growing evidence to support a shifting of focus away from the law enforcement response, ‘especially with regard to communities disproportionately impacted by policing, including LGBTQ+ people, but also First Nations communities and people experiencing complex mental distress’.

The crucial issues for reducing the harm of alcohol across the community are somewhat buried within the report. At para 5.18 and following, there is a discussion of regulatory oversight policy issues including product labelling. At para 5.100, there is an important point made by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education regarding the extent to which the current regulatory regime in Australia is out of date and in effect unfit for purpose. At para 5.97, the report notes:

Multiple submissions, … drew the Committee’s attention to the World Health Organization’s three key strategies … in the regulation of alcohol beverages to reduce health harms from drinking: • restricting exposure to alcohol advertising • increasing excise taxes on alcohol beverages, and • restricting the physical availability of retailed alcohol.

There is discussion in the report in relation to each of these points, albeit largely anodyne and descriptive. There is no criticism of the fact that advertising of alcohol appears to be largely based on industry formulated schemes. As is the way with these reports, the views of diverse interests are laid out without detailed analysis or critique. It is largely an exercise in ‘He said / she said’…. Perhaps we are meant to be reassured by the Committee’s observation (para 5.123) that:

In their submissions to the inquiry, industry representatives highlighted that the majority of Australians were drinking responsibly and in moderation.

The Committee’s final commentary (para 5.131) is carefully framed to acknowledge the range of points raised, but it assiduously steers clear of suggesting that there may be a role for government in controlling alcohol advertising, and crucially in limiting access to alcohol or in raising taxes to reduce demand and to remove inconsistent volumetric rates for tax on alcohol. The Opposition members’ addendum goes further making very clear that the current report has no status whatsoever and is merely an issues paper. They go on to make crystal clear that commercial interests must be engaged before reaching any substantive policy positions:

In chapter two, in relation to the regulation and effects of alcohol there is a need to hear from both sides before coming to any concluded views. In chapter three there are a range of controversial observations that have been made about harm minimisation and the approaches of law enforcement—these need to be tested with evidence from state and territory police. In chapter five, a range of highly contested policy responses are raised. It will be important that the Committee receives submissions and takes evidence from a much wider range of stakeholders to test the evidence, on all matters contained in that chapter, before reaching any conclusions.

For Indigenous interests, this report provides a case study which should cause them to rethink their advocacy strategy in relation to alcohol. The advocacy voices representing Indigenous prison inmates, Indigenous victims of family violence, Indigenous families of individuals suffering acute health issues, Indigenous children growing up in alcohol induced poverty and trauma are either non-existent or severely muted. Instead, the Indigenous interests making submissions to this inquiry are service delivery organisations with a particular focus on accessing the resources necessary to ensure service delivery is effective. These are important and legitimate interests, but they are not the whole picture. The consequence is that the report is able to effectively ignore these hidden or muted perspectives in favour of a focus on service delivery. This amounts to a structural blind spot that will only be filled when Indigenous interests adopt a broader advocacy strategy. In my view, the Coalition of Peaks (which I acknowledge is fundamentally under-resourced) should make addressing these systemic issues a priority for its advocacy efforts. The absence of such a broader systemic perspective in Indigenous advocacy leaves the field open to those mainstream interest groups arguing against reform.

The clear if implicit message from the major parties is that they do not wish to upset the apple cart vis a vis the major alcohol industry interest groups. Instead of policy reforms aimed at reducing access to alcohol and other drugs, the major parties will focus on the provision of health services and other supports. The report made no attempt to address the particular issues facing remote Indigenous communities (but see para 6.4) notwithstanding that they arguably bear the brunt of lax regulation and encompass the most vulnerable subset of the Indigenous population. The submissions to the Committee by NACCHO and the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (available on the Committee website link here) were premised on making the case for community-controlled service delivery and largely ignored the importance of institutional reforms to reduce easy and cheap access to alcohol, and the issues associated issues around incarceration and domestic violence. The NIAA submission ( #140 at this link but not available on its website) focusses on its financial support for AOD treatment:

Through the IAS, the NIAA provides approximately $70 million annually to deliver around 90 AOD activities across Australia. IAS AOD funding is supplementary to Health and state government funding and prioritises treatment that is culturally safe and tailored to First Nations clients. These services offer evidence based, and trauma informed models of care for First Nations people and their families. This includes individual and group based therapeutic care, client-based family support, case management, referrals, and AOD prevention and education activities.

In relation to regulation, the NIAA states:

There are various regulations, laws and restrictions that aim to reduce alcohol related harms in jurisdictions around the country. While some laws, such as the legal drinking age, are in place across Australia, the majority of alcohol regulation is the responsibility of the states and territories. The weight of evidence suggests measures to reduce the availability of alcohol through strengthened controls on price and promotion can contribute to reducing harm and improving public safety.

The submission’s conclusion states:

While substance use impacts all Australians, it disproportionately affects First Nations people. The NIAA emphasises the importance of working in partnership and taking a strengths-based, trauma informed, culturally safe and holistic approach to addressing harmful AOD use. It is critical that First Nations voices are elevated throughout the Inquiry, and that the Committee’s recommendations are informed by the unique histories, cultures and experiences of First Nations people.

The subliminal message from the NIAA then is don’t look to the Commonwealth to drive institutional policy reform, its someone else’s responsibility. See this page on their website too (link here). For what it’s worth, I just don’t buy that argument.

The appendix to the NIAA submission ( #140 at this link) which I strongly recommend readers seek out and read very usefully provides a comprehensive and powerful snapshot of the impacts of alcohol on various sectors. Here are a few data points I have cherry picked from the NIAA submission appendix:

… First Nations people were 4.2 times as likely to die from alcohol-related causes as non-Indigenous Australians. They were also 3.8 times as likely to die from alcoholic liver disease, and 4.7 times as likely to die from mental and behavioural disorders due to alcohol use….

AOD are involved in more than half of all police-reported family and domestic violence incidents in Australia, and are likely to be involved in a substantially greater proportion of all family and domestic violence…. For homicides in the period from 1989–90 to 2016–17, 72% of First Nations offenders were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident, as were 71% of First Nations victims…

If those data points don’t make the case that a national crisis exists and is ongoing for Indigenous communities in relation to the use of alcohol, then what will?

For those still unpersuaded or just interested in exploring the issues further, the following posts deal with various aspects of alcohol policy in remote Australia (link here, link here, and link here). The consistent theme of these posts has been to point out the excessive influence of the alcohol industry in shaping remote alcohol policy, to encourage the Commonwealth to engage proactively in driving reforms including in relation to the accessibility of alcohol.

Conclusion

If Australia was serious about reducing Indigenous incarceration, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

If Australia was serious about reducing family violence within Indigenous contexts, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

If Australia were serious about improving Indigenous health status, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

If Australia were serious about improving socio-economic status within the Indigenous community, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

If Australia was serious about closing the gap, the Commonwealth would step up and lead, and one of its first steps would be to implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

Unfortunately, it is quite clear from a close reading of this report that neither the Government nor the Opposition are serious about any of these issues.

 

18 March 2025

Thoughts on the Northern Territory Police Review 2024

 

…we will divest us both of rule,

Interest of territory, cares of state…

King Lear Act one, Scene one.

 

The publication of the NT Police Review (link here) provides a useful opportunity to consider the policy underpinnings of the role of policing in the NT. The review was undertaken by Vince Kelly, a former NT police officer and former head of the NT Police Association and was supported by a secretariat comprised of staff from the Chief Ministers Department and the NT Treasury. It set out 18 recommendations. I don’t propose to list them or summarise them.

 

The NT Government this week published the review, announcing that it accepts 15 of the 18 recommendations (link here). The Government has also announced a major boost to capital investment for police related infrastructure of $125 million over the coming five years. In the media release (link here) the Chief Minister asserts that the 2024 NT Budget provides $570 million over five years to implement the recommendations of the review.

 

My own take is that overall, the review is a major step in the right direction, and if implemented effectively will improve the quality of policing in the NT considerably. However, this is coming off a low base, with serious pre-existing underlying governance and management issues ensuring that the implementation task will be challenging. As Mr Kelly notes in his foreword, the review follows ‘a decade-long period of organisational and, in many instances, personal trauma for the institution of NTPF and individual members’.

 

The Executive summary provides useful context to the challenges the review is seeking to address:

The current demands for service on NTPF are unequivocally at the highest levels in the history of the agency. Those demands are being serviced in an increasingly adverse operating environment characterised by escalating levels of criminal offending across a number of crime types, corresponding community concern and alarm around issues of community safety and business confidence. … Historically, the NT has consistently recorded higher rates of crime across the majority of crime types and this pattern has continued with an overall crime rate more than double the national average. In the period 2018-2023 assault rates in the NT rose by 44.5% and crime against property rose by 16.8%.

Commensurately, in per capita terms, the NT is the most highly policed population in Australia, with 730 operational police staff per 100,000 people, compared to a national average of 281. When examined in geographical terms, NTPF provides policing services across a geographical area of approximately 1.42 million square kilometres, servicing a population of 252,473 people, of whom some 30% identify as Indigenous with approximately three quarters of that population living in remote and very remote areas.

 

These contextual observations, which have been evident for at least the past 25 years, suggest to me that while fixing the management, resourcing and governance of the NT police is important (indeed crucial), it will not of itself address the underlying structural drivers of this social dysfunction (and I am not referring just to the Indigenous population of the NT when I use this term). Unfortunately, our political system (in both the NT and nationally) appears incapable of focussing on, let alone proactively addressing, these deeper structural impediments. In essence, the NT (and arguably remote Australia generally) remains overwhelmingly neocolonial in its institutional structures, with substantial public and private investment available for commercial ‘development’ that extracts resources but leaves little in the way of ongoing infrastructure (physical, social or cultural) once those investments run their course.

 

Notwithstanding this strategic perspective, it is nevertheless important in my view that NT Police capabilities are progressively strengthened and modernised. To this end I add a small number of comments (in no particular order) regarding the review recommendations and the NT Government proposed response.

 

First, the recommendations that were not accepted by the NT Government provide demonstrable proof (if any is needed) that the NT Government is the prisoner of an ideology that prioritises commercial interests over the public interest. In her media release regarding the review, the Chief Minister states:

 The Territory Government does not accept the recommendation to reduce Police Auxiliary –  PALI – coverage on bottle shops in the Territory [recommendation 11] and does not accept the recommendation to discontinue using private security services in relation to reducing anti-social behaviour [recommendation 12].

 

There is no explanation or rationale provided for these decisions, and in my view, in each case the review made a credible policy argument in support of the recommendation. Yet in each case, they would have adversely affected commercial interests, in particular the alcohol industry and the commercial security industry. This blog has previously pointed to the overweight influence of alcohol interests  (link here and link here). The failure of the NT Government to prioritise the public interest in the development of alcohol policy is both a massive health and social catastrophe and is sowing the seeds of future social and economic dysfunction across the whole community.

 

Second, while the review recommendations relating to the Aboriginal Community Police Officer Program [recommendation 16, page 87] appear to be moving in the right direction, it seems well beyond time that the NT Government and the NT Police should bite the bullet and do away with what are (within the NT police organisational hierarchy) second class employees. There is no reason why Aboriginal Territorians should not expect to be recruited and trained to fill ordinary police roles.  Overall, the NT police employ only 10 percent Indigenous staff in a jurisdiction where the population is 30 percent Aboriginal, and where a substantial proportion of police efforts and activities are directed towards Aboriginal citizens. Such a decision will require political leadership. The continuation of the status quo (albeit with a strategy for incremental improvements taking decades) merely serves to confirm the point I made above that the NT remains a neocolonial outpost. I do not discount the implementation challenges in making the shift I am advocating, but the status quo in not merely untenable, it is corrosive of public trust, and thus makes the challenges of ensuring public safety for all more difficult.

 

Third, the section on remote police infrastructure (page 26) raises a more general issue not raised by the review (notwithstanding the involvement of the NT Treasury on the review secretariat). I refer of course to the principle of horizontal fiscal equalisation. The NT has been funded since at least the 1980s for the cost of providing remote policing services via its allocations of GST revenues as determined by the Grants Commission. There is no link between the calculation of the funding due to the NT and the geographic allocation of available funding. The fact that high levels of underinvestment in police services have persisted over decades despite the NT being notionally funded to provide those services serves to demonstrate (once again) that the structural determinants of public expenditure and investment are exclusionary rather than inclusionary (or even discriminatory).

 

Fourth, the case study on Gunbalunya included in the review as an appendix is worth a look as it makes tangible the impact of underinvestment in policing in remote communities. While the review makes no comment, the clear implication (confirmed by my own anecdotal knowledge) is that the levels of police resourcing in communities are chronically low.

 

Fifth, there are several fascinating data tables in the appendix to the review. To pick just one, section #28 lists real recurrent expenditure per person in the population for police services by jurisdiction over time. Over the past decade, the NT has consistently spent three times the average of all other Australian jurisdictions on policing per citizen. This is not just about remoteness but reflects the severe underinvestment in the full panoply of social and physical infrastructure necessary for building and sustaining viable communities.

 

Conclusion

This review and its implementation is a welcome step to improving the capacity and capability of the NT Police to ensure community safety across the NT. Unfortunately, it will not be sufficient to ensure that community safety outcomes improve and don’t worsen. These basic expectations for a modern democratic society have been progressively placed at risk over the past two decades in the NT. The solution requires more fundamental reforms, which in turn will not happen without the instigation and proactive involvement of the Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth appears disinclined to do anything more than offer band-   aids. Both levels of government appear to have divested themselves of the responsibilities of ‘ruling’ in the public interest.

 

My pessimistic conclusion is that the social cohesion of the NT will likely worsen over the coming decade. While the absence of social and physical infrastructure (housing, education outcomes, health outcomes) will be chief contributors, the trigger for flare ups will likely be the absence of an effective regulatory regime for alcohol consumption in the NT. The role of the police will become more visible and more important as they are given the task of dealing with the consequences of long-standing policy ineptitude by the NT political class.

 

11 April 2024

Regulating Alcohol in the Northern Territory: in whose interest?

 

This might be the pate of a politician….one that would circumvent God

Hamlet Act 5, Scene 1

 

Introduction

The recently released Independent Panel Review (IPR) into the proposed Dan Murphy (DM) development in Darwin is, in public policy terms, a fascinating document (link here). It was commissioned by the Board of Woolworths, one of Australia’s largest and most ubiquitous corporations. The panel appointed was led by Danny Gilbert, one of Australia’s most well connected and socially aware corporate citizens. It is comprehensive, analytically dense, rigorously argued, and deals with a multitude of issues. On its face, it is about the role and responsibilities of Woolworths in particular, and business more generally, in relation to contentious public health and social policy issues arising from corporate operations that have negative impacts of one kind or another on the community.

 

So, the IPR canvasses issues such as corporate social responsibility in a modern economy, corporate Australia’s relationship with Indigenous Australia, governance standards within a large corporation, particularly in relation to subsidiaries, an economic, demographic and social snapshot of the Northern Territory, alcohol consumption in Australia and particularly in the NT, regulation of alcohol sales in the NT, the adequacy of community consultation processes by a large corporation. While all of these issues are discussed in relation to a particular proposal, namely the proposed Dan Murphy’s retail development in Darwin, much of the discussion is relevant to, and has implications for, broader relationships between corporate Australia and the wider community.

 

However, the IPR is also about the broader relations between what I will term mainstream Australia and Australia’s Indigenous citizens. In particular, it is about one of the most fraught issues underlying sustained and ongoing Indigenous disadvantage, namely, excessive alcohol consumption, and its wider ramifications.

 

The challenge for the nation is to find a sustainable balance between the rights of citizens to consume alcohol and managing the severe, but non-universal consequences of excessive consumption. For a range of complex but in many ways obvious reasons, a proportion of Indigenous citizens appear to be particularly vulnerable to these adverse consequences. I don’t propose to explore the issues of responsibility for these outcomes in this post, but would merely note that like many social processes, it seems likely there are multiple causes underlying these adverse outcomes.  

 

In this context, corporations clearly have social responsibilities to minimise harm arising from their operations. The IPR can be read as one of the most robust and rigorous arguments in support of this proposition to emanate from within the business community. However, so too do governments have responsibilities both to regulate potentially harmful activities within the community in the public interest, and to minimise harm from their own policy decisions and actions.

 

The IPR is framed as a report to the Board of Woolworths, and its focus is squarely on what Woolworths should do to align its commercial policies in Darwin and surrounding regions with its wider corporate social responsibilities. The IPR makes nine key findings, all directed to Woolworths and by extension to its (currently) majority owned subsidiary Endeavour which in turn owns the Dan Murphy brand and network of retail outlets (link here).

 

The concluding sentences of the Executive summary are a succinct summary of the IPR’s overarching conclusion:

… the Panel recognises that the negative impacts that arise from the over consumption of alcohol in the Northern Territory, laid out in detail in this report, are off the scale, not just by Australian, but by international standards. The resulting impacts in terms of human suffering and social and economic costs cut right across the Northern Territory community and are not confined to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Territorians. They cannot be ignored. (p.13).

 

I recommend readers take a look at the IPR. The Executive summary, summaries at the beginning of each chapter, and the use of well-designed graphs and figures go a considerable way to making an otherwise complex document accessible.

 

In this post, I seek to go beyond merely summarising the IPR’s arguments and findings (important as they are) and to focus on what the IPR reveals (perhaps unintentionally) about the role of government in fulfilling its role in protecting the public interest in relation to the consumption of alcohol. Given the space limitations of blog post and the detail included in the IPR itself, I would characterise this post as merely an outline of an argument. In effect, I am laying out an alternative way of reading the IPR, and pointing to just some of the facts and events they identify and analyse that support such a reading.

 

In December 2020, Woolworths (to its credit) established an independent review to examine the recently approved proposal to establish a DM retail outlet in Darwin (link here). This decision followed an outbreak of community concern — indeed outrage — about the regulator’s decision to approve and the way it had been approved by the NT regulatory authorities (link here). One of the back stories to the genesis of the IPR is the mounting of an extraordinarily effective campaign against the proposal by Indigenous organisations and their allies based in Darwin and beyond led in large measure by an extraordinary Indigenous leader, Olga Havnen. This post does not attempt to chart the history of those efforts, but there is no doubt that without the campaign, the Woolworths Board would not have commissioned the IPR. 

 

Reading between the lines, it seems likely that the decision to commission the IPR also suggests a level of concern within the Board of Woolworths regarding the actions and decisions of its wholly owned subsidiary Endeavour. Complicating the back story, Woolworths had announced in July 2019 that it proposed to pursue of demerger of the recently established Endeavour Group while retaining a minority shareholding and single Board position within the newly listed entity. That demerger has yet to be finalised.

 

On 29 April 2021, following receipt of the IPR, Woolworths announced that it would not be building a DM retail outlet in the location previously proposed (link here and link here). On 9 June 2021, along with the release of the IPR, Woolworths and Endeavour issued separate responses to the IPR (link here and here), and Woolworths issued a detailed document reflecting on the IPR and responding albeit briefly to what it considered the key findings (link here). While I don’t propose to analyse those responses in detail in this post, it is clear that the Endeavour response is more limited and much more defensive than the Woolworth’s response. This is perhaps explained by the forthcoming demerger, which will leave Woolworths with a minority shareholding in Endeavour of 14 percent, and Endeavour with the task of undertaking the heavy lifting in terms of balancing its commercial alcohol retail operations in Darwin and the wider public interest in harm minimisation.

 

The NT Government’s role and responsibility

 

Chapter 5 of the IPR describes the level and consequences of alcohol consumption in the NT. The summary of the chapter states, inter alia,

The Northern Territory has the highest rate of alcohol consumption in Australia, and a much higher share of the population drinks at risky levels compared to the Australian average…The financial costs to Darwin and the Northern Territory Government from these harms are also acute. Given the demonstrable health and economic costs, it is clear that the level of alcohol-related harm requires urgent and meaningful attention. (p.49)

 

Contextualising the horrendous statistics on disadvantage amongst Indigenous citizens, the IPR states:

There is a view of some in the community that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage is intractable and that First Nations peoples must bear full responsibility for their status without any compromise to the requirements and wishes of the non-Indigenous population. The Panel rejects that perspective (pp.52-3).

 

The chapter goes on top lay out with surgical precision the devastating statistics on alcohol abuse across the NT:

The Northern Territory has nearly six times the level of alcohol-related emergency department presentations compared to the next closest state or territory (p.53)….

…Dr. Mahiban Thomas, reported that an estimated 350 cases of broken jaws and noses were admitted to the hospital each year, with 88 per cent of those cases caused by alcohol-related assaults. Darwin was suggested to have the highest rate of broken jaws in the world, second only to Greenland (p.54)…

…The Northern Territory has nearly three times the level of alcohol-induced deaths compared to the next highest State or Territory, at a rate of 8.9 per 100,000 population in Darwin, and 28.5 deaths per 100,000 in the rest of the Territory. This figure was more than five times the Australian population-weighted average...

 

On the costs of alcohol consumption, the report quotes research suggesting the financial cost of alcohol consumption to the NT community is $1.4 billion, some 5 percent of the $24.3 billion NT Gross State Product, or 17 percent of the $7.3 billion spent by the government on services to the public.

 

Clearly, the both the economic and social costs of alcohol are such as to warrant proactive harm minimisation policies by the NT Government. What clearly sits behind the IPR’s conclusions are the enormous personal costs and harm of alcohol abuse imposed on individuals, families and children. The IPR mentions these at pp.55 and 126, but it is nevertheless likely that most readers will pass over these points without a second glance. Yet the reality is that alcohol is inexorably destroying the lives of drinkers, families, and children, one day at a time. Most insidiously, alcohol has all the characteristics of an addictive drug, and its misuse has lifelong adverse health and psychological  implications both for users and their close families.

 

Chapters Seven and Eight of the IPR deal the progression of the Woolworths / Endeavour proposal through the extant regulatory processes, and are the key chapters for understanding the actions of the Northern Territory Government in this saga.

 

In April 2017, the NT Labor Government established a review by a former Chief Justice of the NT Supreme Court, Trevor Riley, to review all aspects of the Liquor Act 1978 and surrounding policies. The Riley review was published in October 2019, and made 220 recommendations proposing a whole of government integrated alcohol harm reduction framework. The NTG accepted 187 recommendations and pledged in principle support for a further 32 recommendations. The single recommendation rejected was to ban takeaway sales on Sundays (p.59). As a result of the Riley review the Liquor Act was amended in a series of amendment Acts through 2017 to early 2019, which are clearly summarised on pp. 71-2 of the IRP.

 

Separately, Woolworths, through its subsidiary Endeavour, in mid-2018 sought regulatory approval to establish its Dan Murphy development. See the overview of the legal processes on p.73, and the detailed consideration over the following pages. In September 2019, the Liquor Commission refused Woolworth’s application, based on its detailed assessment of the community impact which would flow from the proposal and its consideration of the public interest. The IPR summarises the Commissions reasons at pp. 76-78. In an extraordinary response, the NT Government released a public statement calling the decision of its own independent regulator  ‘a kick in the guts for responsible drinkers who want more choice in the Darwin market’, and pointed out that it was open to Woolworths to appeal the decision (p.81).

 

The Liquor Commission decision was followed by an application by Woolworths to the NT Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (NTCAT). The appeal was dismissed. Woolworths then appealed to the Supreme Court of the NT in January 2020. In March, a legislative amendment resolved the issue in dispute in such a way as to allow the Liquor Commission to now approve the proposal, thus negating the action in the Supreme Court. A further application appealing the Liquor Commission’s decision not to approve the proposal was filed with NTCAT by Woolworths in April 2020. This was subsequently deferred and then abandoned after further legislative amendments which enabled a new ‘expedited’ decision making process to be undertaken by the Director of Liquor Licencing (‘the Director’). See pp.79-81 for a detailed description of these processes.

 

In Chapter Eight, the IPR assesses the impact of the 2020 legislative changes that, inter alia, removed the decision making responsibility from the Liquor Commission, and provided for the Director to make an expedited decision of four historical applications, including the DM proposal. Extraordinarily, the legislation allowed the Director to make a decision without prior notice to the applicant or any other person, without holding a hearing, and provided that any decision would not be reviewable by the NTCAT. The IPR concluded that these amendments were not good public policy. See the detailed analysis and discussion on pp 83-86.

 

The IPR went on to report that there had been ‘significant engagement between Endeavour and the Northern Territory Government’ in relation to the 2020 legislative amendments to the Liquor Act 2019 (p.86). Endeavour’s proposals were closely aligned with the eventual amendments, but with the significant difference that Endeavour proposed that the matter be advanced by a Ministerial decision rather than the approach ultimately adopted of the Director making the decision. The IPR were critical of Endeavour for its approach, in particular, its suggestion that ‘explicitly excluded any requirements to satisfy the public interest and community impact test’ in the post Riley legislative framework (p.87).

 

Without seeking to exonerate Endeavour, it is clear that the NT Government bears a much greater responsibility for what transpired. It is governments that are expected to act in the public interest, yet all that the NT Government could muster was a craven attempt to facilitate the interests of a major corporation. Moreover, they deliberately established a system where a public servant (the Director) made the decision rather than a Minister as suggested by Endeavour, and rather than the independent Liquor Commission as required by the pre-existing legislative framework. It goes without saying that a public servant is not independent of the executive arm of government. Further, the legislation established a framework that explicitly denied the community natural justice, while making a cynical assumption that the technical complexity involved and (apparent) non-involvement of a minister would diminish any public criticism.

 

Finally the IPR undertook a critical assessment of the Director’s decision to approve the Woolworth’s DM proposal. The assessment identified various legal shortcomings, problematic reasoning, and an approach which adopted a starting point favourable to Woolworths, which set aside expert opinion in favour of the Director’s own previous experience and informal advice from the police, and which set aside the views of local communities most impacted by the proposal (pp. 88-91).

 

Conclusion

 

So to summarise, the NT Government responded to the decision of the independent Liquor Commission that had identified extensive harm and community impact as likely to flow from the establishment of a DM retail outlet by turning 180 degrees from  its explicit 2019 commitments to implement the Riley review recommendations, by criticising its own independent statutory body, by overturning its own legislation to implement the Riley recommendations, and legislating a new process that required a public servant to make a new expedited decision within a legal framework that set aside natural justice, precluded public hearings, prevented appeals, and allowed problematic reasoning to trump expert opinion and community views. In short, the NT Government pro-actively facilitated the pursuit of private interest to the exclusion of substantial evidence that it was not in the public interest.

 

One of the more insidious impacts of this type of behaviour by governments is the way in which trusted institutions within the public domain are politicised and pressured, with deeper and widespread implications for levels of trust in our democracy and core institutions. To take just one example highlighted by the events described by the IPR, the NT police appear to have been influenced (either explicitly or implicitly) to self-censor their perspectives on the social impacts of increased availability of cheaper alcohol in relation to the DM proposal. According to the IPR, in July 2020, the NT police gave evidence in another application for a substituted liquor licence. The IPR reported (p.57):

In Superintendent Antony Deutrom’s evidence to a Liquorland application for a substitution of premises in Palmerston in July 2020, Northern Territory Police stated that the impacts of alcohol on the Northern Territory continue to be “appalling and pervasive…culminating in extra strain”. At the time, demand for police services across the Northern Territory was on the rise, up 39.5 per cent compared to the previous period. Further, 15.4 per cent of those incidents were alcohol-related. Superintendent Deutrom also said, “an increase in alcohol availability could further impact on these figures in a negative manner” [footnotes deleted].

 

See also Superintendent Deutrom’s comments on p.55.  In contrast, the NT Police comments to the Liquor Commission hearing into the DM proposal were much less robust:

In relation to the Darwin Dan Murphy’s development, Commander of Police in the Northern Territory, Travis Wurst, gave evidence to the Liquor Commission in 2019. Commander Wurst referred to the risks attached to the proposed Bagot Road site from a public and road safety viewpoint, the problems of public drinking, and more generally about the role of the Police Auxiliary Liquor Inspectors and the impact of alcohol restricted areas in the Greater Darwin area and surrounding remote  communities. Commander Wurst also noted that the Northern Territory Police were neutral on the application by Woolworths Group and that the application was neither objected to formally, nor endorsed in any way (p.57) [emphasis added].

 

Of course, the unanswered question raised by this clear NT Government strategy to support the DM proposal is ‘why?”’ Why did the NT Government reverse course? Why did it ignore the very significant health, social and economic costs likely to flow from the DM proposal? Why did the Indigenous members of the Government remain silent and accede to this policy? Endeavour has stated that it was in discussion with the NT Government regarding the changed location of the proposed DM outlet (link here). We know that Endeavour proposed legislative change that was substantively taken up by the NT Government. What other conversations were undertaken between Endeavour and the NT Government? The short answer is that we don’t know and the IPR doesn’t tell us.

 

In an appendix, the IPR provides an extensive list of the stakeholders consulted. It is clear that it sought to engage widely within and beyond the NT. It lists engagement with a small number of NT agencies, but there is no mention of any Ministers in the NT Government being consulted. It seems highly unlikely that the Independent Panel did not seek to engage with ministers (it mentions that it consulted with the MLA for the seat surrounding the proposed development, Labor backbencher Mark Monaghan, as well as representatives of the Opposition). The IPR mentions that a number of stakeholders consulted did not wish to be named in the report. Either way, the unpreparedness of Ministers in the NT Government to engage on the record with such a high profile assessment of the proposal speaks volumes for the disdain the Government has shown both to the norms of public debate about issues of significant importance for the NT, and to the NT community itself.

 

While the extraordinary campaign led by Indigenous interests and leaders such as Olga Havnen have won this battle, it is far from clear that they will win the war.

 

The importance of this case study of an important public policy process is that it has largely been driven by business. The Woolworth’s Board clearly decided that they may not be getting the full story from Endeavour (see p.111), and thus commissioned the IPR. The IPR clearly found that Endeavour had been engaging closely with the NT Government.

 

The facts demonstrate that ‘when push comes to shove’, the NT Government is unwilling and/or incapable of pursuing and protecting the public interest. Perhaps the solution is for the corporate sector as a whole to take a wider view of the issues relating to alcohol consumption across the NT, and to develop an active strategy that seeks to protect the public interest as well the private corporate interests they are entitled to advocate for and pursue. After all, if — as the evidence suggests is the case — governments are in the pocket of business, then perhaps it is time for the business sector to step up and pursue the public interest as well as their private interests. It is actually in business’s interest that the nation is inclusive, has a vibrant economy, and a healthy citizenry. The IPR is potentially the first step towards a much more inclusive and visionary stance by corporate Australia.

 

My recommendation to Woolworths would be that its credibility with Indigenous Australia, and the community more generally, would be enhanced were it to actively and transparently use its market heft and influence, as well as its directorship on the Endeavour Board, to ensure that both Endeavour and the NT Government put the public interest above commercial interests in the development of future alcohol policy in the NT.

 

My recommendation to the NT Government is that they should take the opportunity of the publication of this report to undertake a fundamental reconsideration of their policy approach to alcohol regulation. To do otherwise will be to deepen their complicity in an entirely preventable scourge that is taking a terrible toll on many Territorians, including a substantial proportion of Indigneous Territorians. If they cant fix this, their credibility on every other area of public policy will remain in tatters.

 

Finally, I am conscious that I have not mentioned a role for the Australian Government in these issues. Yet it was only fourteen years ago that the Australian Government legislated alcohol prohibition across remote NT communities citing statistics that have barely changed from those we see today. While I am not advocating a return to those punitive policies, there is a role for the Australian Government through the range of policy levers at its disposal to encourage public policy and corporate policy outcomes in the wider public interest. Silence and sitting on the fence is not an adequate response to the ongoing health crisis linked to alcohol abuse across the NT and beyond.