Scie Blog

Paedophilia among Aboriginal Australians: relying on evidence or focus groups?

Dr Alex Wodak
28 June 2007

Dr Wodak is Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. He has a major interest in prevention of HIV among injecting drug users, treatment of drug users, health aspects of prisons and drug policy reform. He is President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and former President of the International Harm Reduction Association. He helped establish the first needle syringe programme and the first medically supervised injecting centre in Australia (when both were pre-legal) and often works in developing countries on HIV control among injecting drug users.

There is virtually universal agreement among Australians that the health and social conditions of our indigenous citizens are intolerable. Numerous reports confirm that this has been the case for many decades. Multiple diverse interventions based on widely differing assumptions and perspectives have failed to achieve substantial or sustained progress. The excessive consumption of alcohol and other drugs, including tobacco, has had a profoundly devastating effect on many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and their families and communities. Alcohol and other drugs have exacerbated multiple, severe, adverse factors. The situation for indigenous Australians is similar to, but even worse than, the situation applying to indigenous people in other developed countries including New Zealand, the USA and Canada. It is impossible to develop effective interventions to deal with the problem of psychoactive drugs among indigenous Australians without also taking into account and at least partly correcting the other multiple severe factors disadvantaging this population in health, social, education, housing and employment areas.

The intervention by the Prime Minister on 21 June rightly draws attention to the immense contribution of alcohol to the distressing problems of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children today. The importance of alcohol was rightly highlighted in the recent Northern Territory report 'Our Children are Sacred’. However, action taken in this difficult area should be considered and consultative and based on sound evidence and best practice. There is always a risk of making a bad problem even worse by producing policy on the run.

Policy in such a contentious and sensitive area announced during the run up to an election will inevitably be dismissed by some or even by many as purely politically motivated. Many Australian governments have launched initiatives to deal with the alcohol and drug problems of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with great fanfare, poorly identified objectives, limited budgets, inadequate consultation and deficient research and evaluation. However, one policy framework that has been well prepared is the 'The Complementary Action Plan 2003 - 2009', endorsed in 2003 by Australia's paramount official drug policy making body, the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy. Has this plan been given a chance to work?

Alcohol was prohibited for indigenous Australians for over 100 years from the 1850s until the 1960s (and even beyond in some areas). The result of this policy was disastrous. Alcohol prohibition may be beneficial in some isolated Aboriginal communities in remote areas provided that this has the overwhelming support of the members of the community. But alcohol prohibition has been adopted in many countries in the world apart from the USA. The record has generally been profoundly disappointing. Even in the Islamic world, only a handful of countries have adopted and persisted with total alcohol prohibition because of the unpleasant effects of only being partially effective.

The Northern Territory government started the 'Living with Alcohol' programme in 1992. This involved increasing alcohol taxation by about 5% with a tiny fraction of this revenue allocated to alcohol prevention and treatment programmes. Careful independent evaluation showed 20-40% improvement in several important parameters. However, after a 1997 High Court decision, the Northern Territory government was forced to close the 'Living with Alcohol' programme. The 'Living with Alcohol' programme should be reinstated nationally. Only the Commonwealth Government has the capacity to do this. It is not by any means the only action which is needed to control the problems highlighted by recent publicity. But it is probably one of the most important measures needed to reduce the nature and extent of problems due to alcohol which are central to the serious other problems now being discussed.
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