Late night liquor trading and the real cost of a big night out in the Adelaide CBD

• South Australia Police

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report cover: Alcohol and crime

05 July 2010This report focuses on the impact of alcohol misuse on violence, social disorder and drink driving in the late-night economy of the Adelaide Central Business District (CBD). The key issue addressed is whether the State of South Australia currently has the appropriate balance of policy settings to allow the beneficial aspects of alcohol consumption to be enjoyed in the CBD, while minimising the costs and harms.

Reducing the level of alcohol-related crime, disorder and injury in the Adelaide CBD is not simply a matter of having more police. There is every reason to believe that this approach would not only be extremely expensive, but unsuccessful. Given the complex nature of these problems, they require approaches that involve a range of key stakeholders. These stakeholders include the SA Police (SAPOL), the Adelaide City Council (ACC), liquor licensees, the Office of the Liquor and Gambling Commissioner, health agencies and providers of transport services.

There is increasing community disquiet and media focus on problems of alcohol-related violence, public disorder and drink driving occurring in, and emanating from, the CBD. While this has predominantly focused on Hindley Street, increasing levels of problems are also occurring in Hutt, Gouger, Waymouth and Rundle Streets. This means that SAPOL’s resources need to be spread more thinly to respond to this trend.

Over the last two and a half decades there has been a substantial increase in the availability of alcohol in the Adelaide CBD. This proliferation has occurred across several axes. These include:

• an increased number of licensed premises;
• an increased number of different types of licensed premises;
• increased hours of availability;
• an increased number of beverage types; and
• an increased number of special events licences.

Several premises in Hindley Street and its environs have the capacity to trade 24 hours a day on the basis of them being in a tourist location. The extent to which this 24-hour trading actually contributes to the vitality of the tourism industry is very unclear. SA Police data indicate that 97.6% of those apprehended for offences and 97.9% of victims of offences in the CBD had a home postcode within South Australia. On the one hand, there could be a large number of tourists who are attracted to and utilising the CBD, who have an exceptional capacity to avoid trouble, either as an offender or a victim. The alternative possibility is that the current late-night trading arrangements are predominantly catering for the local, rather than the tourist, market.

Having 24-hour trading means that there is no ‘recovery time’ for the precinct and there is little, if any, gap between the night-time users of the precinct leaving and the day-time users arriving. As a result, the day-time users of the area encounter the individuals left over from the night before and the often unsavoury results of their activities.

The Australian and international research on the relationship between extended trading hours and a high density of alcohol outlets, and their adverse impact on alcohol-related social harms, is overwhelming and irrefutable. That is, as the hours of trading and the density of licensed outlets increase, so do the frequency of problems such as assaults. These findings are particularly relevant to the situation in Hindley Street in which the 24- hour trading premises are located relatively close to each other. There is also good evidence that reducing the hours of liquor trading reduces many of these harms.