Alcohol restrictions in Australia: why are we not listening to the people who matter?

It is a particularly appropriate moment in history to be considering alcohol supply restriction policies in Australia. At the end of July 2022, long-term federal government restrictions on the purchase and supply of alcohol are set to end in the Northern Territory. As with the original sweeping removal of
self-determination for Aboriginal people that occurred during the “Intervention” or the Northern Territory Emergency Response in 2007, and the follow-up Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act 2012, which set the alcohol restriction policies into law, these changes have once again been enacted without consultation or negotiation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is also worth remembering that none of these laws were originally
able to be passed without setting aside the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 in order to make laws that only applied to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. For a more complete historical timeline of these events, see Clifford et al.’s recent comprehensive overview of alcohol policy legislation.