Ideas@TheCentre
Crying foul over alcohol laws
The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, along with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), is playing the ‘race’ card by intervening in a case that challenges alcohol bans in Cape York Communities. Congress’s decision to get involved in this ‘important’ test case highlights the erroneous priorities of the ‘Aboriginal Industry,’ where focusing on racism is deemed more important than supporting practical measures to address Indigenous disadvantage.
Congress and AHRC are supporting a Palm Island woman, Joan Maloney, in her appeal against a conviction for possessing contraband spirits in a public place on Palm Island in 2008, arguing that the alcohol restrictions in the predominantly Aboriginal community breach the Racial Discrimination Act.
Maloney’s lawyer is arguing that the laws are not racially neutral and that the alcohol ban was introduced without adequate consultation with the community.
GenerationOne CEO Warren Mundine and Congress member Sue Gordon have attacked Congress’s decision to wade into the debate, arguing that the laws are in place to protect people, particularly children, from the harmful effects of alcohol abuse. Gordon also questions why Congress was getting involved and whether it had consulted any of its 4,500 members, some from ‘dry’ communities that are voluntarily alcohol free, before crying foul over the alcohol laws.
The Racial Discrimination Act has ‘special measures’ that allow some potentially discriminatory acts to be considered lawful if the discrimination can be justified as reasonable and aimed at assisting or protecting disadvantaged groups. In 1995, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found alcohol bans in Indigenous communities to be a ‘special measure.’
Congress can’t have it both ways – supporting the special measures enabling Aboriginal people to be treated differently when it suits the Congress and arguing against them when it does not.
In any case, the laws banning alcohol in the Palm Island community are not race based. Bans on alcohol apply to all residents of the community – non-Indigenous as well as Indigenous.
Nor are Indigenous communities alone in having restrictions on the possession and consumption of alcohol. Across Australia, council bylaws restrict alcohol in public places, with fines of more than $1,000 for drinking alcohol in some prohibited areas.
Calling alcohol laws ‘racist’ downplays the serious harm alcohol causes in Indigenous communities. Recent research into the prevalence of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in the Indigenous communities of Fitzroy Valley found nearly half of all eight-year-olds have alcohol-related disorders.
Instead of focusing on important issues like this, Congress would rather play the ‘race’ card. This is divisive and unhelpful to those who are subjected to racist attacks. It is like the little boy who cried wolf – by the time something serious happens, no one listens. This is yet another example of the Aboriginal Industry doing what Aboriginal lawyer Hannah McGlade identified in her book Our Greatest Challenge – putting issues of ‘racism’ before women’s and children’s needs.
Sara Hudson is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
