On- and Off-Premise Drinking Choices Among Indigenous Australians: the Inﬂuence of Socio-Spatial Factors

Drug and Alcohol Review (2010) DOI: 10.1111/j.1465-3362.2009.00144.x COMMENTARY On- and off-premise drinking choices among Indigenous Australians: The influence of socio-spatial factors Introduction Historical background The geographies of alcohol consumption have been Banning Indigenous patrons from the hotel bar (or examined by researchers from several different disci- serving them from a slot out the back) was the most plines. Alcohol researchers have investigated spatial and egregious manifestation of the policy of alcohol prohi- environmental influences on drinking [1], the impact of bition for Indigenous people. Prohibition was just one outlet density [2] and the ‘bunching’ of particular types example of the racial segregation in Australia that sepa- of venue [3,4]. Australian criminological research has rated people spatially, socially and economically [13]. It examined for example, the location and type of venue created geographies of drinking and drunkenness sepa- associated with alcohol related assaults [5,6], the rating Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians— regional geography of offending [7] and the policy the vestiges of which still exist today. Prohibition implications of this [8]. affected all individuals of Aboriginal descent as well as Human geographers have been slower to engage in Torres Strait and Pacific Islanders. Racially based nuanced empirical studies of the spatialities of drink- alcohol restrictions were introduced and administered ing and Jayne, Valentine and Holloway suggest that by each state, commencing with New South Wales in geographical research has under theorised the role of 1838. The consequence was public drinking with sup- space and place as key constituents of alcohol, drink- plies purloined when and how people could get hold of ing and drunkenness [9]. Anthropological studies in them, precipitating an Australian anxiety about these Australia and overseas have investigated the social and public displays that has persisted ever since. cultural patterns of the drinking act and their role in The public hotel was the social hub of every Austra- sociability and the creation and sustenance of related- lian country town, and for Aboriginal people exclusion ness among Indigenous people [10,11]. It is well constituted a profound social disability as well as a known among anthropologists in Australia that in humiliation. Banning hotel drinking was the aspect of many regions Indigenous people use space and place as prohibition that rankled most, especially among those ways of differentiating one group from another [12]. who worked alongside whites [14]. Aboriginal drinking This paper uses an anthropological approach to was often binge drinking: racially segregated, unmoni- examine the ways in which Indigenous people utilise tored and beyond the normal checks and balances such differentiation in their drinking arrangements. (however, rudimentary) that existed in the bounded Choice of place and companions is used to enhance space of licensed premises. Drinking in the open sociability, but also to avoid trouble. However, these enabled a culture of unconstrained consumption to socio-spatial choices influence decisions that favour flourish. It also made it easier for Aboriginal drinkers to packaged (takeaway) liquor rather than consumption put pressure on relatives—the practice of ‘demand on regulated licensed premises. Attempts to reduce sharing’ [15] in which close kin and consociates share the well-documented harms associated with takeaway and exchange their resources. liquor and to encourage on-premise drinking have The repeal of restrictions took place state by state included the establishment of community-owned with the last restrictions repealed in Western Australia licensed social clubs and public hotels, with mixed in 1972, less than 40 years ago. Not surprisingly, hotels results. and licensed clubs became targets for Aboriginal Maggie Brady PhD, ARC Fellow. Dr Maggie Brady, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Hanna Neumann Building 21, Australian National University, ACT 0200, Australia.Tel: +61 2 6125 4796; Fax: +61 2 6125 9730; E-mail: [email protected] Received 5 March 2009; accepted for publication 12 October 2009. © 2010 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs 2 Commentary activism over the right to drink as equals [16], and once case in the 1960s—these struggles today almost invari- prohibition was repealed, in urban and in rural areas ably concern the availability of takeaway alcohol [25,26] the hotel was the real and symbolic site where people because Aboriginal people are well aware of the fact drank in order to proclaim their equality. In March that for them, alcohol-related trouble (both social and 1965 for example, not long after the anti-discrimination physical) is primarily associated with takeaway liquor, ‘Freedom Ride’ in outback New South Wales, Aborigi- not with on-premise consumption [27]. In Bourke nal activist Charles Perkins led a large group of Aborigi- Shire, for example, where there are consistently higher nal men in a defiant ‘drink-in’ at the Burlington Hotel, rates of alcohol-related crime than in other New South Sydney. Wales Local Government Areas [7], there has been a In the early 1970s in Bourke (a small town in rural documented shift from drinking on hotel premises to New South Wales), social change activist Dr Max off-premise consumption. Between 2002–2003 and Kamien observed that the hotel provided Aboriginal 2007–2008 there were reductions in the rate of assaults people with the opportunity to be on equal terms with on licensed premises, but arrests following consump- whites. The premises were also comfortable by com- tion in the home increased by 48% [28]. parison with most Aboriginal housing at the time. More significantly, Kamien observed that drinking in the Social, cultural and spatial issues hotel alongside non-Indigenous people began to make inroads into the all-or-nothing style of consumption It is hardly surprising that Aboriginal drinkers, like that had developed under prohibition. He noted that other Australians, made the switch to buying alcohol for people began to shift from finishing the bottle to ‘milder off-premise consumption, and for similar reasons: social habits’ [17]. This was not the case everywhere because of lower prices, easy availability and bulk however, and in the 1970s, at bars in Alice Springs, buying. Structural, political and social circumstances, such as the ‘snake pit’ at the Riverside Hotel (where including discriminatory practices and dress require- Aboriginal drinkers became predominant), chairs ments, have also led Aboriginal drinkers to locations became weapons and had to be removed; and the other than licensed venues [29]. There are, however, square yard at the Hotel Alice became known locally as some less obvious reasons why many in the Aboriginal ‘Madison Square Gardens’ because of the number of population have abandoned hotel-drinking since the fights there [Personal communication, Dick Kimber heady days that followed the repeal of race-based (historian), Alice Springs 1/8/08] (cf [18]). restrictions. These reasons have to do with the socio- cultural spatialities of alcohol consumption. At a community alcohol forum in June 2008, the On-premise drinking versus packaged alcohol Bourke AlcoholWorking Group (part of the local Com- A decline in drinking on hotel premises and a growth in munity Drug Action Team) reported the shift from consumption of packaged alcohol have occurred among hotel to home-based drinking, together with the all Australians since the 1970s, influenced by factors, reasons given by Aboriginal people for preferring to such as industry deregulation, greater competition, drink at home (with takeaways), rather than in a hotel. supermarket sales, drive-in bottle shops, random breath At home, they said, there were fewer restrictions on testing, competitive prices, changed drinking cultures behaviour, packaged alcohol was cheaper, and the and technology [19,20]. Technological innovations in hotels lacked entertainment and food, segregated the 1960s and 1970s, such as ring-pull cans, rip-top Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and were stubbies [21] and the wine cask, have been designed to unpleasant due to noise, smell and poor facilities. make it easy for customers buying takeaway alcohol. Aboriginal respondents also explained that drinking The convenient air-tight wine bladder in a box, the takeaway alcohol allowed for people to stay together with ‘cask’, was invented in Australia, became popular for a chosen group while drinking [28].The ability to select, home consumption in the general population [22] and recruit and maintain particular companions for the act rapidly found its way into Aboriginal drinking circles of drinking also emerged as an issue during research [23] where it is colloquially known as the ‘green suit- undertaken by the author in Elliott, Northern Territory case’ or ‘lady in boat’ (after the illustration on the box in 2008. Elliott (pop 658) is a small town on the main produced by one wine brand) [24]. highway north of Tennant Creek, with a long history of For many Aboriginal drinkers now—particularly in local Aboriginal activism around alcohol issues. Despite rural and remote Australia—the public hotel is not the existence of a licensed public hotel in the town, usually the drinking location of choice and takeaways during my research there the (majority) Aboriginal have taken over. Today the political and regulatory population preferred to make their own drinking debate within the Indigenous community over availabil- arrangements with their self-imposed takeaway ration ity is not about access to on-premise sales as was the of two six-packs of full strength beer. In an unusual © 2010 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs Commentary 3 example of home-based consumption that appeared to from those they did not get on with, and orient their work well (unlike the reports from Bourke, and with the camps towards the country from whence they came assistance of local police), the Aboriginal residents of [32]. Drinking in selective groups is a variation on this the two ‘town camps’ just north and south of the town theme.

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