The alcohol lobby’s bottle of wine is not an evidence base

The announcement of next year’s Gather Round should have been a straightforward celebration. Instead, the South Australian hotel industry used the moment to turn on the government over one of the clearest safety measures recommended by the state’s Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence: a minimum two-hour pause between ordering alcohol online and having it arrive at the door. 

On Seven News Adelaide, Australian Hotels Association SA chief executive Anna Moeller said the pause “may actually exacerbate harm to the very cohort it seeks to protect.”  Retail Drinks Australia has gone further, repeatedly insisting there is no evidence linking express alcohol delivery with alcohol misuse or high-risk use, and calling on parliament to reject the reform. 

These are not modest claims about implementation details or business inconvenience. They are claims about the safety of victim-survivors. If the AHA and Retail Drinks Australia want to make them, they should be prepared to show their work. 

What evidence on domestic, family, and sexual violence do these alcohol industry bodies possess that Professor Michael Salter, Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Jess Hill, and the many other specialists who have spent years studying the escalation and prevention of violence have somehow missed? What evidence have they identified that was unavailable to the federal Rapid Review expert panel¹, the South Australian Royal Commission², the Victorian Coroner³, Minister Tanya Plibersek, Assistant Minister Ged Kearney and the Women and Women’s Safety Ministerial Council⁴ when it reaffirmed the need for alcohol regulation to be evidence-based and to consider the safety of women and children? 

That is not an appeal to authority. It is a demand for consistency. When independent researchers, a Royal Commission, a coronial investigation, and governments reviewing the national evidence reach a converging conclusion, the industry cannot rebut them simply by repeating the words ‘there is no evidence.’ Repetition is not peer review, and a media release is not a systematic assessment of domestic and family violence risk. 

The evidence is not difficult to find. Australian research has found that one in five users of alcohol home delivery platforms had ordered because they had run out of alcohol and wanted to keep drinking. Around one-third of that group said they would have stopped drinking if delivery had not been available, and they were six times more likely to drink at high-risk levels⁵. More recent research found that 55 per cent of people likely to be experiencing alcohol dependence that had used online alcohol delivery platforms had used rapid delivery, compared with 24 per cent of people assessed being at low risk⁶. FARE polling found that 38 per cent of rapid delivery customers consumed more than ten standard drinks on the occasion of purchase. 

Emerging analysis of mandatory same-day delivery sales reports in New South Wales also found that, when industry transaction data was used for comparison, the average amount delivered per transaction was estimated at more than one litre of pure alcohol⁷. That is equivalent to more than two and a half litres of 40 per cent spirits. The market is not confined to the endlessly invoked bottle of wine arriving alongside dinner. It also includes purchases running to four litres of vodka, delivered into homes where people may already have been drinking. 

The ‘wine with dinner’ line is effective because it replaces the actual policy question with a reassuring domestic image. Nobody objects to dinner. Nobody objects to a responsible adult buying wine. But the legislation does not ban either. It introduces a short pause into a business model designed to remove every pause between impulse and supply, including when a drinking occasion is already under way. 

The safety pause is not based on the claim that alcohol causes domestic and family violence. People who use violence are responsible for their choices, and gender inequality and harmful norms remain central drivers of gender-based violence. The evidence does show, however, that alcohol can increase the frequency and severity of violence, impair judgement, intensify conflict, and increase the risk within a home⁸. Regulating a product that can exacerbate violence is not a substitute for perpetrator accountability. It is one practical part of it. 

This is exactly why the federal Rapid Review recommended that governments strengthen liquor regulation to prevent gender-based violence, including restrictions on alcohol sales and delivery timeframes. It is why South Australia’s Royal Commission recommended the two-hour safety pause². It is why Victorian Coroner Ingrid Giles recommended a two-hour delay and overnight delivery restrictions after investigating the death of Kathleen Arnold³, whose access to rapidly delivered alcohol undermined the efforts of her family and treating clinicians to keep her safe. 

Retail Drinks Australia also claims a pause will send people to unregulated sellers or onto the road. Yet the evidence supplied for that conclusion does not establish that a two-hour pause causes drink-driving, and Australian studies indicate many consumers would simply stop drinking if immediate delivery were unavailable⁵. Saying that a consumer might ask somebody else to purchase alcohol is not proof that an intoxicated person will drive. It is an inference, presented as fact, by an organisation whose members profit from keeping rapid delivery available. 

The AHA and Retail Drinks Australia are entitled to argue that the reform affects their members’ business models. They are entitled to ask government about implementation, enforcement, and unintended consequences. What they are not entitled to do is dress a commercial objection in the language of victim-survivor safety without producing credible DFSV evidence to support it. 

If they have that evidence, they should publish it. They should disclose who commissioned it, make the data and methodology available for independent scrutiny, and explain why it outweighs the findings of peer-reviewed Australian research, a Royal Commission, a coronial investigation, and the national Rapid Review. They should explain why they believe the commercial costs of the proposal outweigh the safety benefits. A two-hour safety pause is not prohibition, punishment, or moral judgement. It is a proportionate circuit breaker that preserves access to alcohol while reducing immediate resupply during higher-risk drinking occasions. South Australians can still buy wine for dinner. They can order it earlier, purchase it in person, or wait two hours for delivery. What people experiencing violence cannot always do is ask an escalating perpetrator to pause, wait, or reconsider. 

The alcohol lobby’s favourite hypothetical is a bottle of wine beside a plate of pasta. Public policy must account for the whole market, including the rapid delivery of very large quantities of alcohol into private homes and the risks borne by people who did not place the order. A bottle can wait two hours. The safety of women and children should not have to wait for the industry to admit that the evidence already exists.

References

1. Rapid Review Expert Panel. (2024). Unlocking the prevention potential: Accelerating action to end domestic, family and sexual violence. Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/unlocking-prevention-potential-2.pdf  ↩︎
2. Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence. (2025). With courage: South Australia’s vision beyond violence. Government of South Australia. https://www.royalcommissiondfsv.sa.gov.au/publications/With-Courage  ↩︎
3. Coroners Court of Victoria. (2025). Finding into death without inquest: Kathleen Dawn Arnold (COR 2023 005162). https://coronerscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-02/COR%202023%20005162%20Form%2038%20-%20Finding%20into%20Death%20without%20Inquest.pdf ↩︎
4. Women and Women’s Safety Ministerial Council. (2026, August 7). Women and Women’s Safety Ministerial Council communique: 7 August 2026. Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. https://www.pmc.gov.au/resources/women-and-womens-safety-ministerial-council-communique-7-august-2026  ↩︎
5. Colbert, S., Wilkinson, C., Thornton, L., Feng, X., Campain, A., & Richmond, R. (2023). Cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of Australians who use alcohol home delivery services. Drug and Alcohol Review, 42(5), 986–995. https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.13627  ↩︎
6. Brownbill, A., Carah, N., & Pettigrew, S. (2025). Online sale, delivery and advertising of alcohol in Australia: Behaviour, attitudes and support for change. Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, The University of Queensland, & The George Institute for Global Health. https://fare.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Online-sale-delivery-and-advertising-of-alcohol-in-Australia-%E2%80%93-behaviour-attitudes-and-support-for-change-3.pdf  ↩︎
7. Taylor, N., Button, K., Livingston, M., Peacock, A., Gilmore, W., & Kowalski, M. (2026). Using mandatory sales reports to monitor same-day alcohol delivery trends in New South Wales. Drug and Alcohol Review, 45(3), e70142. https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.70142  ↩︎
8. ANROWS (2022) Intimate partner violence homicides 2010-2018, Australian Domestic & Family Violence Death Review
   Network Data https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/australian-domestic-and-family-violence-death-review-networkdata-report-intimate-partner-violence-homicides-2010-2018/ ↩︎