Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this Committee and thank you for holding this Inquiry.
My name is Caterina Giorgi and I’m the CEO of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education or FARE.
I want to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands that we are meeting on today – the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people and I also want to acknowledge the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders who are driving change across the country.
Today I’m sitting beside Rachel Allen and following us you will hear from Sophie Harrington, Angelene Bruce and Jessica Birch. You will have also received submissions from James Brett, Trevor Royals, Kym Valentine, Kathryn Elliot, Stephanie Taylor, William Spaul and Rodney Holmes.
I want to acknowledge each of these people because they are sharing their lived experience of how alcohol has negatively impacted their lives.
This isn’t easy.
There is a lot of stigma that exists around alcohol in our society and community and it creates inordinate barriers for people to engage.
Increasingly decision makers are asking for people to share their experiences in an effort to understand.
Each time you do this, you’re asking people to re-open wounds and you’re raising expectations and hope. When you make this request, it brings with it a responsibility to act.
Every day, people across Australia are negatively impacted by alcohol, through injury, mental ill-health, chronic diseases, alcohol use disorders, gender-based violence and disadvantage.
At this very moment, we have the highest rate of alcohol induced deaths in two decades. We’ve also seen upticks in hospitalisations and alcohol treatment episodes which have not returned to pre COVID levels.
1,742 people lost their lives from alcohol induced deaths in 2022. This is higher than people who die on our roads or from melanoma. When you consider all alcohol related deaths – 5,000 people die each year – that’s one person every 2 hours.
The harms from alcohol also ripple through our families and communities.
Alcohol increases the risk and severity of gender-based violence and violence against children. Depending on which state you live in, alcohol is involved in between 23 and 65 per cent of family violence incidents reported to police.
One in six children are also harmed because of alcohol. These children have been verbally abused, witnessed violence, physically abused, left unsupervised or experienced financial abuse.
These harms don’t arise by accident. They occur because systems are geared towards driving this.
We live in communities where alcohol is available early in the morning and late into the night. It can also feel like there is an alcohol outlet on every corner.
The expansion of data driven marketing means that people get pummelled with ads online and the delivery of alcohol means that it can be sold by companies into a person’s home within 30 minutes.
Alcohol companies sell 36% of alcohol to 5% of Australians.
With new models of marketing – companies can now reach this group of people in a way that was not possible in the past – continuously targeting them with predatory promotions.
This makes it impossible to escape alcohol for people who are wanting to cut back or for people who are in situations where alcohol exacerbates violence.
We’ve had women share with us that the sound of the alcohol delivery truck is the prompt for them to enact a safety plan to keep their children safe.
We’ve had family members share with us that they have had a loved one who was delivered thousands of dollars of alcohol to their home right up to their death. I’ve even been shown images of whole rooms filled with empty boxes with well-known alcohol retail brands.
And this is all possible because we don’t have sufficient guard rails in place to protect people from harms.
Our state and territory alcohol laws have not been substantially changed for more than five decades. They focus on building business ahead of harm reduction – and contribute to rising levels of inequity and the overcriminalisation of people who are most vulnerable.
Rules around marketing are left to companies themselves – and they are found to often have disregard for them.
Services are woefully underfunded across prevention, early intervention, treatment and support.
But change is possible. And we are seeing this in some actions currently being taken by governments.
In September last year National Cabinet agreed to review state and territory alcohol laws to make sure they are best practice in preventing gender-based violence.
The South Australian Government is currently consulting on a Bill which strengthens their laws and we have seen a commitment by the ACT Government to undertake a comprehensive review.
The Australian Government has partnered with FARE to deliver the Every Moment Matters campaign on alcohol, pregnancy and breastfeeding. This world leading campaign is three years in and is increasing awareness and changing behaviours. Every dollar spent on the campaign is resulting in a $9 return on investment.
The Australian Government has also made a commitment to develop a framework for the prevention of alcohol-related family violence, which is a recommendation from the Rapid Review of Prevention Approaches for gender-based violence.
These are positive steps.
There are also areas where governments are taking backward steps.
The lobby group representing commercial television stations is proposing to extend when alcohol can be advertised by 800 hours a year – largely in children’s viewing times and at high-risk times on weekends and public holidays.
Because of our flawed alcohol marketing laws – the lobby group themselves are tasked with consulting on their proposed plan and drafting the final Code for consideration by ACMA.
The Northern Territory Government has introduced a Bill to remove the Minimum Unit Price for alcohol which is being debated next week. This is being done without meaningful consultation with the community, and if passed, it will remove an effective measure which is making a difference.
It is no coincidence perhaps that the Chief of Staff to the Chief Minister just left a job as the head of the alcohol industry lobby group in the Territory.
This revolving door is one way that commercial interests influence policy. But there are many more.
This Parliaments Register of Interests shows that one in four federal politicians have received a gift from an alcohol company or lobby group.
The most recent disclosure from the Australian Electoral Commission revealed that companies that profit from alcohol donated $1.8 million to political parties in 2023-24.
But their influence goes much further than this.
When these corporations are ever-present, it creates a cloud of influence hanging over decision makers and fosters a general assumption across the public service, and among politicians and advisors that certain issues are out-of-bounds.
There are also just-straight-out terrible behaviours by some companies – like the biggest alcohol retailer in Australia fighting to try and build an unwanted alcohol megastore near dry Aboriginal communities in Darwin, or alcohol lobby groups opposing pregnancy health warnings and then claiming to take the scalps of senior public servants once they are adopted, or the largest alcohol retailer boasting of how their sales increased by 26% on the night of the first state of origin – a night when alcohol-related family violence incidents reported to police increase by more than 40%.
We must address this influence if we are going to make progress.
People need a chance to make a change.
As one of the participants in a study on predatory online alcohol marketing, Megan, shared, ‘Make it easier for people who are actively trying to change.’
The cards are currently stacked against us. This Inquiry can help to change that.
