Producing the market for alcohol: The Victorian example

Journal of Australian Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 83-98

  Zajdow, Grazyna ^a  

^a DEAKIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Alcohol and history; Alcohol inquiries; Alcohol licensing

Indexed keywords

EID: 79951966676     PISSN: 14443058     EISSN: 18356419     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2010.541474     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Peter Temple, Truth, Text Publishing, Melbourne. 2009, p. 246.
2. C. Houston, C. Johnston, & P. Austin, 'This is Melbourne at night', The Age, 23 February 2008, p. 1.
3. D. Rood, 'Tough laws aim at CBD violence', The Age, 31 August 2007, p. 5.
4. P. Hadfield, Bar Wars: Contesting the Night in Contemporary Britain, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.
5. D. Hobbs, P. Hadfield, S. Lister, & S. Winslow, Bouncers: Violence and Governance in the Night-time Economy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.
6. D. Talbot, Regulating the Night: Race, Culture and Exclusion in the Making of the Night-time Economy, Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 2007.
7. Hadfield, Bar Wars, 2006, p. 45. Emphasis in original.
8. N. Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power and Personhood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1998, p. 100.
9. There was one review of the changes stemming from the 1986 inquiry, (Liquor Control Act 1987. Review. Final Report, State Government of Victoria. April, 1988) but the 1965 (referred to as Phillips), 1977 (referred to as Davies) and 1986 (referred to as Nieuwenhuysen) were the three major inquiries post Second World War.
10. J. Nicholls, 'Drink: the British disease?', History Today, vol. 60, no. 1, 2010, p. 10.
11. Nicholls, J. The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2009, p. 15.
12. Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol, 2009, p. 36.
13. Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol, 2009, p. 37.
14. R. Fitzgerald, & T.L. Jordan, Under the Influence: A History of Alcohol in Australia, ABC Books, Sydney, 2009, Ch. 1.
15. Fitzgerald & Jordan, Under the Influence, 2009, p. 15.
16. Fitzgerald & Jordan, Under the Influence, 2009, p. 55.
17. J.D. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry into the Operation of the Liquor Control Act 1968, Parliament of Victoria, 1977, p. 15.
18. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 15.
19. Fitzgerald & Jordan, Under the Influence, 2009, p. 193.
20. R. Annear, Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker's Melbourne, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2005, p. 26.
21. L. Craze & J. Norberry, 'The objectives of Liquor Licensing Laws in Australia', in T Stockwell (ed.) Alcohol Misuse and Violence, Vol. 5: An Examination of the Appropriateness of Efficacy of Liquor Licensing Laws Across Australia, Australian Commonwealth Publishing Service, Canberra, 1993, p. 41.
22. During this period it was considered desirable to make public houses as unwelcoming as possible, in this way compelling men to spend more time at home with their families.
23. 'Since the 1950s, many public inquiries in Australia have focused on the question of how liquor laws might... promote the profitability and competitiveness of the liquor industry... As a result the primary objectives of liquor laws introduced since the 1960s have most often been the reduction of State interference and regulation of the industry', (Craze and Norberry, The Objectives of Liquor Licensing Laws, 1993, p. 41).
24. J. Nieuwenhuysen, 'Liquor control policy and alcohol availability - Consumption relationships: Reflections on the Victorian Debate', Australian Drug and Alcohol Review, vol. 7, 1988, pp. 263-271.
25. PD. Phillips, Report of the Royal Commission into the Sale, Supply, Disposal or Consumption of Liquor in the State of Victoria, Parliament of Victoria, Melbourne, 1964, p. 3.
26. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 1.
27. J. Nieuwenhuysen, Review of the Liquor Control Act, 1968: Report, Victorian Government Printer, Melbourne, 1986, Vol. 1, p. xxv.
28. This was not confined to Victorian inquiries. As Craze and Norberry, 'The objectives of Liquor Licensing Laws', 1993, p. 35, note in reference to Australia as a whole, A noticeable development during the current century has been the shift by legislatures away from the social purposes of the restriction of liquor sale, supply and public consumption to the purposes of deregulation, the reduction of State interference with the liquor industry, the encouragement of diversity in services and facilities and the promotion of tourism and economic prosperity'.In his introduction to Harden's book, John Cain makes the case for the importance of social reform, of which the licensing laws were only a part. He is silent on the neo-liberal bent of the government and the marketisation of many aspects of life at the time. Harden points out that there was no public clamour to change the licensing laws at the time.
29. M. Harden, Melbourne: The Making of a Drinking and Eating Capital, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 64.
30. T. Luckins, 'Pigs, hogs and Aussie blokes: the emergence of the term "six o'clock swill"', History Australia, vol. 4, no. 1, 2007a. p. 08.8.
31. Fitzgerald & Jordan, 2009, Under the Influence, ch. 4.
32. Harden, Melbourne, 2009, p. 12.
33. R. Room, 'The long reaction against the wowser: the prehistory of alcohol deregulation in Australia', Health Sociology Review, vol. 19, no. 2, 2010, pp. 151-63.
34. Luckins, 'Pigs, hogs and Aussie blokes', 2007a, p. 08.7.
35. T. Luckins, 'Competing for cultural honours: cosmopolitanism, food, drink and the Olympic Games, Melbourne, 1956', in D. Kirkby, & T. Luckins (eds), Dining on Turtles: Food, Feasts and Drinking in History, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, 2007b.
36. Luckins, 'Competing for cultural honours', 2007b, p. 94.
37. K. Dunstan, Wowsers: Being an Account of the Prudery Exhibited by Certain Outstanding Men and Women in such Matters as Drinking, Smoking, Prostitution, Censorship and Gambling, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1968.
38. D. Horne, The Lucky Country, fully revised (third) edition, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1971.
39. This need for cross subsidising between bottle-shops and dining rooms led to a complexity in the licensing laws and the so-called 8% rule. See discussion below.
40. Phillips, Report of the Royal Commission, 1965, part 3, p. 26.
41. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 14. Emphasis added.
42. Nicholls, Drink: The British Disease?, 2010, p. 14.
43. T Luckins, 'Gentrification and cosmopolitan leisure in Inner-Urban Melbourne, Australia, 1960s-1970s', Urban Policy and Research, vol. 27, no. 3, 2009, pp. 265-75.
44. Annear, Lost and Found, 2005, p. 26.
45. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 14.
46. Nieuwenhuysen, Review of the Liquor Control Act, 1986, Vol. 1, p. 201.
47. Nieuwenhuysen, Review of the Liquor Control Act, 1986, Vol. 1, p. 34.
48. Nieuwenhuysen, Review of the Liquor Control Act, 1986, vol. 1, p. 202.
49. N. Rose, P. O'Malley, & M. Valverde, 'Governmentality', Annual Review of Law and Social Science, vol. 2, 2006, pp. 90-1.
50. Rose, Inventing Ourselves, 1998, p. 164.
51. D. South, 'Changing drinking and driving patterns: a case history', in J. Vernon (ed.), Alcohol and Crime, Canberra, Australian Institute of Criminology, 1990, pp. 107-19.
52. There already was a provision in the Crimes Act for a blood alcohol level of.05, but the police at the time had to prove that a driver's abilities were impaired. Phillips recommended (and this was subsequently acted upon) that the blood alcohol level of.05 be sufficient in itself for a legal sanction. See South, 'Changing drinking and driving patterns', 1990.
53. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 43.
54. A successful educational program, undertaken on a less restricted scale than education as to.05 per cent generally requires a multi-disciplinary approach. It requires the consideration and co-operation of doctors, social workers, members of the police force, specialists in alcohol problems and educators. This has been the approach of the Victorian Temperance Alliance which has in recent years done excellent work in making lectures and written material available to schools in Victoria. Generally when courses have been implemented at a particular school, they have been implemented in association with backup assistance and co-operation from the doctors and members of the police force in the district'.
55. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 46.
56. Phillips, Report of the Royal Commission, 1965, p. 73.
57. Phillips was ambivalent about the ability of any regulation to change attitudes so we can see the movement between the early twentieth century beliefs about the importance of law in enforcing normative attitudes, and the late twentieth century ideology of individual responsibility and self-regulation. He was also beginning to evince a particular attitude to the business of business. When referring to a specific term of reference related to the practices associated with alcohol promotion, including advertising, he wrote: 'It is not surprising if certain sociological implications are neglected in the normal atmosphere of commercial activity. These evils cannot be made the subject of statutory controls or other legal regulations. At bottom they are matters of social conscience - perhaps matters upon which remedy may be gradual or uneven'.
58. Phillips, Report of the Royal Commission, 1965, p. 81.
59. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 43.
60. Nieuwenhuysen, Review of the Liquor Control Act, 1986, p. 168.
61. Fitzgerald & Jordan, Under the Influence, 2009, pp. 191-2.
62. Currently the Liquor Licensing Commissioner is based in the Department of Consumer Affairs. The minister responsible currently oversees legislation that includes the Prostitution Control Act, Landlords and Tenants Act, Consumer Credit Act, as well as the Liquor Control Reform Act 1998.
63. Houston, Johnson & Austin, 'This is Melbourne at night', 2008.
64. M. Valverde, 'Police science, British style: pub licensing and knowledges of urban disorder', Economy and Society, vol. 32, no. 2, 2003, p. 237.
65. Nieuwenhuysen, Review of the Liquor Control Act, 1985, Main themes p. 3.
66. P.J. Lloyd, 'The economics of regulation of alcohol distribution and consumption in Victoria', The Australian Economic Review, vol. 69, 1985, p. 16.
67. K. Bruun, G. Edwards, & M. Lumio, et al., Alcohol Control Policies in Public Health Perspective, Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies. Helsinki, 1975.
68. Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol, 2009, p. 206.
69. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 12.
70. Davies, Report of the Board of Inquiry, 1977, p. 12.
71. Nieuwenhuysen, Review of the Liquor Control Act, 1986, p. 132.
72. It can be seen that even in 1965, the terms of reference precluded sophisticated, scientific understandings in favour of populist outcomes. According to Phillips, 'It was clear that these projects (sociological understanding of the issues) would involve considerable expenditure, trained personnel, a lengthy time scale and perhaps in some respects, uncertain results. I decided, on the whole, it was unlikely that any such programme had been contemplated when the Terms of Reference were framed (Phillips, Report of the Royal Commission, 1966, p. 7).
73. M.H. Moore, & D.R. Gerstein, Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the shadow of Prohibition, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1981, p. 66.
74. Bruun et al., Alcohol Control Policies, 1975. This debate is still ongoing, although most literature does support it.
75. T Stockwell, J. Zhao, & G Thomas, 'Should alcohol policies aim to reduce total alcohol consumption?: New analyses of Canadian drinking patterns', Addiction Research and Theory, vol. 17, no. 2, 2009, pp. 135-51.
76. T Babor et al., Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity: Research and Public Policy, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010.
77. A submission to the 1965 Royal Commission from Carlton and United Breweries made it very clear that they would oppose any change in alcoholic content of its beers and attacked such measures as 'wowserish'. 'The apparent demand which occasionally arises (for low alcohol content in beer) can invariably be traced back to that limited but highly vocal section of the community whose ultimate objective is the elimination of all beer -in short, the Prohibitionists' CUB Ltd. Submission to Phillips, 1965, p. 143. Similar arguments were made to the Davies and Nieuwenhuysen inquiries. The commissioners considered all these seriously. Documents which are now coming to light from alcohol companies make it clear that they would oppose any limitations on their ability to produce and sell any alcohol, in similar fashion to the way that tobacco companies did in the 1950s to 80s. Thus they would always argue that limits on alcohol were part of a 'wowser' ideological agenda.
78. L.B. Bond, M. Daube, & T Chikritzhz, Access to confidential alcohol industry documents: from "big tobacco" to "big booze"', Australasian Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, 2009, pp. 1-26.
79. A consultant's report to the National Competition Council reiterated the findings of the scientific literature that 'a high alcohol price is one of the single most effective methods of reducing alcohol consumption and harms', but this did not seem to make an impact on NCC decisions related to the regulation of the market for social rather than economic reasons. (Marsden Jacob Associates, Identifying a Framework for Regulation in Packaged Liquor Retailing, Report prepared for the National Competition Council as part of the NCC Occasional Series, Melbourne, 2005, p. 6). Similarly, the 1998 review of the Victorian legislation agrees. It states 'Therein lies the current dilemma. Contemporary trends are in the direction of deregulation, free markets and individual responsibility of consumers. However, such trends run contrary to a substantial body of evidence with regard to control strategies and alcohol consumption and harm'. (Liquor Control Act 1987. Review. Final Report, State Government of Victoria. April, 1988, p. 120).
80. As was discussed above, this was intended to help hotels cross-subsidise their facilities by guaranteeing the viability of their take-away or off-premises sales.
81. E. Jones, 'Liquor retailing and the Woolworths/Coles Juggernaut', Journal of Australian Political Economy, vol. 55, 2005, pp. 23-47.
82. Marsden Jacobs and Associates, A Framework for Regulation, 2005.
83. P. Borsay, 'Binge drinking and moral panics: historical parallels?' History and Policy. Accessed 16 February 2010 from: http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-62.html.
84. Nicholls, The Politics of Alcohol, 2009, p. 256.
85. Nieuwenhuysen, Liquor Control Policy and Alcohol Availability, 1988.