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Drunk on competition: National Competition Policy is undermining the ability of governments to responsibly regulate alcohol.

Article Excerpt
In April 2006, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) and the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Fund released a report titled 'Liquor outlet concentrations and alcohol-related neighbourhood problems'. The report found that in New South Wales, neighbourhood problems of drunkenness, property damage and domestic assault were strongly related to the proximity of alcohol sales outlets and the concentration of outlets in any neighbourhood. The study found that 24 per cent of people who lived within half a kilometre of the five closest licensed premises reported problems with drunkenness within the previous 12 months, while the figure for those who lived more than 1.6 kilometres away was 9.5 per cent. Similarly, 21 per cent of those people who lived in areas where there were more than 22 alcohol outlets per 10,000 local population reported problems with drunkenness, a figure that fell to 13.5 per cent for people who lived with less than eight outlets per 10,000 population.

The findings of this study do not differ from many others in Australia and elsewhere that show the very strong correlation between alcohol consumption and problems such as assault, property damage and criminal victimisation. A previous BOCSAR report in 2001 found a strong relationship between assaults and the volume of alcohol sold in high assault areas, as well as between property damage and offensive behaviour and higher alcohol sales' volumes.

What, though, does any of this have to do with the interests of readers of Arena Magazine? Well, a comment in the latest report made me sit up and think again of the relationship between the neo-liberal, market-driven regime of contemporary democratic nation states such...

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