The Hon Kevin Humphries MP, NSW Minister for Mental Health - FARE

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Minister for Mental Health
SPEECH BY THE HON KEVIN HUMPHRIES MP
NADA Member Forum
I would like to welcome the representatives here from the Foundation for Alcohol
Research and Education …University of NSW …University of Newcastle …the
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre ….and the researchers, local
communities, local governments and the relevant government agencies involved
in the trial.
I would also like to acknowledge my State and Federal Parliamentary colleagues
in attendance. It is fantastic to see so many of you here today.
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As Minister for Mental Health and Healthy Lifestyles ….it is my pleasure to join you
today to officially launch the results of the Alcohol Action in Rural
Communities project.
What a remarkable study this is. This ambitious research project involving 20
towns throughout NSW is the largest and most rigorous evaluation of a
community action approach to reduce risky alcohol consumption and
related harms ever undertaken in the world.
The damaging effects of alcohol-related misuse have always been an issue of
concern in NSW, as they have been throughout Australia. Research conducted by
the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education has shown that alcoholrelated
problems cost at least $36 billion a year.

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We know that Australia has some of the highest rates of risky drinking in the world.
Some alarming statistics relating to risk drinking were reported in the 2010
National Drug Strategy Household Survey, which found that:
one in five people drink alcohol at a level that puts them at risk of harm or
injury over their lifetime – one of the highest rates in the world;
at least once a week, about one in six people put themselves at risk of an
alcohol-related injury from a single occasion of drinking;
at least once a month, about two thirds of 18-19 year old males, and more
than half of 20-29 year old males, put themselves at risk of alcohol related
injury.
In Australia, drinking too much on a single occasion …binge drinking …is by far
the most common type of excessive drinking, and the consequences are all too
visible on Friday and Saturday nights in communities throughout NSW. They
range from the serious – the street brawls, the hospital ED admissions, the
assaults …to the threatening – the verbal abuse and intimidating behaviour of
intoxicated individuals and groups.
The NSW Government is well aware of the harmful effects of alcohol misuse and
is committed to taking action that will reduce these effects, with one of the goals of
the 2012 NSW Plan to reduce total risk drinking by 25 per cent across the State by
2015. But there are two caveats here: firstly, good solutions cannot be
devised independently of communities – whether the solutions are legislative
or local-action, community support is a vital ingredient. Secondly, the solutions
must be informed by evidence …put simply, solutions need to demonstrate that
they provide bang for the buck.
Those caveats are why I am so pleased to launch the results of the Alcohol Action
in Rural Communities project here today. This world leading researchclearly
shows that communities can work effectively with their local government,
health services, police, schools and a range of key stakeholders to devise

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and implement their own community-based solutions.
But just as importantly, local communities had the opportunity to engage with
researchers who have skills in real world evaluation of policies and programs, to
ensure their solutions were consistent with existing evidence …and to ensure their
solutions were subjected to rigorous evaluation.
I would just like to emphasise this point because it is crucial to understanding the
importance of this research. As Associate Professor Anthony Shakeshaft will
discuss in a moment, the evaluation design was a randomised controlled trial,
which is the most rigorous design there is.
This process of randomising whole communities to evaluate alcohol interventions
has only ever been done once before in the US ….and only to assess the impact
on drinking and harms among young people. So this project is the first
internationally to measure the impacts across the whole community. It is a
remarkable achievement.
So what did the communities actually do, and did it work I’ll leave the details to
Anthony, but a number of interventions were systematically implemented over a
five-year period in each of 10 communities in regional NSW. And it was a range of
different interventions applied together which made a real difference - providing
communities with information about drinking patterns and harms that are specific
to them, including targeting their own high-risk weekends was an important place
to start.
Working with schools, with hospitals, with GPs, with pubs and clubs, and with local
government together was critical to ensure that alcohol was seen as a communitywide
issue, not just a problem for the local GPs or police to deal with.
The main results for the 10 active communities, compared to the 10 nonactive
or control communities, were a:
20 per cent reduction n in average alcohol consumption;

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42 per cent reduction in residents’ experience of alcohol fuelled verbal
abuse;
33 per cent reduction in alcohol-related street offences;
30 per cent reduction in the number of residents who reported drinking at
levels that placed them at high-risk of alcohol-related violence, accidents
and injuries .
Given the known relationships between excessive alcohol consumption and poor
physical and mental health, these findings are particularly encouraging.
The Alcohol Action in Rural Communities project has shown that collaboration
between communities and researchers is not only possible, but can achieve
internationally recognised results. There is a good opportunity now to think about
how we can get better at this sort of collaboration in across our communities in
NSW, and develop responses which have proven to work in our communities, and
which communities will have responsibility for.
From the Government’s perspective, we will continue to engage with the
community to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol through programs such as the
Community Drug Action Teams, which enable local communities to identify and
reduce the harm caused by the misuse of alcohol and other drugs within their
communities.
There are currently over 80 CDATs across NSW that undertake various projects in
response to alcohol misuse including poster campaigns, information days, youth
forums, music festivals and mentoring programs.
Since the AARC project and CDATS share the same aim, the results of the
AARC study are expected to have a significant impact on the work undertaken by
CDATs through its assessment and measurement of the most effective types of
intervention to reduce alcohol related harm in local communities.

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In addition to this, the NSW Government recently launched the What are you
doing to yourself responsible drinking campaign, which aims to reduce
excessive drinking and public drunkenness in the Kings Cross area through the
promotion of personal responsibility to the consumption of alcohol.
The campaign places the responsibility of responsible drinking on the individual,
with a focus on how much they consume and the consequences. It is a great
example of a targeted, localised campaign in action.
I commend everybody involved in the world leading AARC trial.