In August 2025, the Minister for Health and Ageing re-established the Inquiry into the health impacts of alcohol and other drugs in Australia, that had lapsed at the end of the previous parliamentary term. The Inquiry had received over 200 Submissions and published an Issues Paper in March 2025, that included the recommendation that the Inquiry continue in the next Parliamentary term. FARE lodged a supplementary Submission to the reconstituted Inquiry, which had the same Terms of reference.
FARE’s submission was unique as was led by FARE’s Lived Experience Advisors, in line with our 2024 recommendation to ensure that alcohol policy and programs reflect people’s experiences. These are people with lived expertise of alcohol harms related to family violence, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and alcohol dependence.
FARE acknowledges and thanks them for their courage and generosity in engaging with this process. FARE also acknowledges that this group does not include people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are disproportionately impacted by alcohol harms and any policy and programs targeting these harms must be led by these communities.
This supplementary submission offered additional recommendations to the original 2024 Submission, primarily led by FARE’s Lived Experience Advisors.
Recommendations
1. Lived experience involvement in policymaking
1. Embed the meaningful involvement of people with lived experience in alcohol policy and program development.
2. Alcohol and other drug (AOD) support and treatment
2. Prioritise increased and sustained funding for public and youth-specific AOD treatment services.
3. Provide targeted funding to organisations to expand AOD-specific training for service providers.
4. Prioritise funding for sobering-up centres and mobile outreach services.
5. Commission a targeted public awareness campaign to educate the community and frontline professionals about Alcohol Use Disorder.
6. Implement routine alcohol screening and brief intervention as standard practice in primary care by equipping GPs and frontline health professionals with targeted training.
7. Establish and fund diversionary options such as residential rehabilitation and AOD courts.
3. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)
8. Provide adequate funding to fully implement the National FASD Strategic Action Plan 2018–2028, and the recommendations from the Senate Inquiry.
9. Undertake a comprehensive review of specialised FASD support services.
10. Invest in an integrated awareness and education campaign to promote best practice, coordinated care for people with FASD.
11. Invest in comprehensive training for midwives and antenatal care providers, curriculum reform, diagnostic support tools, and the continued rollout of the National FASD campaign.
4. Alcohol and gendered violence
12. Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments recommit to and pass reforms to Liquor Acts and alcohol regulations consistent with the evidence-based recommendations in the Rapid Review and South Australian Royal Commission.
13: Action plans supporting the National Action Plan on Gendered Violence should give targeted attention to alcohol reforms.
14. Invest in integrated models of care (eg. common risk assessment frameworks), and cross-sector professional development.
15. Improve and standardise data collection on the role of alcohol in family violence across police, emergency, and child protection systems and invest in qualitative research.
16. Independently engage children affected by family violence through safe, developmentally appropriate processes.
5. Harmful product marketing
17: Introduce a federal harmful product marketing act to comprehensively regulate the advertising of alcohol (and other harmful products).
18. Strengthen regulations to restrict data-driven and personalised digital alcohol marketing, including banning push notifications and targeted ads.
19. Close the loophole in the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice that allows for alcohol to be advertised during sporting events, when the risk of violence is greater.
6. Commercial determinants of AOD harm
20. Exclude alcohol companies and their lobby groups from the development of laws, policies or programs related to alcohol harm reduction, due to their conflict of interest.