Reflecting on the battle against alcohol.
November 14, 2008

RADIO 2CBA FOCAL POINT COMMENTARY BROADCAST ON FRIDAY DECEMBER 19 1999 ON RADIO 2CBA FM.

“Oh to see ourselves as others see us”. It is very important to get a good view of how the rest of the world sees us.

Sitting in a hotel is a good way to think about the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign against alcohol. Last Friday, I found myself in a hotel. I was a speaker at Politics in the Pub. Over the years, this has become a Sydney institution, with a variety of speakers on current affairs presenting at a location whose good-natured rowdy atmosphere is rather like the old Hyde Park Corner in London. Three of us were there to speak on Kosovo.

The two other speakers were very heavily involved in left wing politics. At one point, they got into a technical discussion about left-wing theory. The younger members of the audience thought that their discussion was irrelevant to today’s problems.

As those two re-fought the issues of the 1930s, I began thinking about how the work I am involved in over alcohol must also appear to those young people. Perhaps we in the temperance movement are also seen as irrelevant and rather quaint. Indeed, even the term “temperance” is an old-fashioned one.

For example, we have tended to emphasize the dangers of alcohol. It is, after all, a major killer in Australia. It kills more people each year than the total number of Australian soldiers killed throughout the Vietnam war.

But young people want risk in their lives. By emphasizing the dangers of alcohol, we have been making alcohol seem more attractive because of its excitement. As the saying goes “We are here for a good time – and not a long time”.

Perhaps we need to give less attention to the dangers of alcohol and focus our message on what the young people themselves dislike. This is particularly the case now that the HSC is over and students are heading north for the “schoolies week” on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

First, alcohol is a real let-down. There may be some excitement in the beginning but hang-overs are not much fun.

Second, you cannot put an old head on young shoulders. Instead of older people lecturing young people on alcohol, it may make more sense to have last year’s senior students who were appalled at what happened at the Gold Coast to return to their old schools to speak on the disappointment of alcohol.

Third, the Gold Coast is not just a Mecca for this year’s exiting students but also the predators who are in their 20s, who are looking for vulnerable young girls and opportunities to sell drugs. Young people do not like the idea that they are losers being manipulated and ripped off.

The element of manipulation is a key component of schoolies week. It was invented by the Gold Coast’s business interests as a way of making money. Initially the local authorities were opposed to it because they did not like the idea of about 40,000 drunken teenagers rampaging through the Gold Coast. But the business interests won the argument.

They make the money and the students get ripped off. This may be a more challenging message for young people to hear.