BY JOHN McGILL
& BRONWEN BEECHEY
ADELAIDE — On April 2, Adelaide City Council voted to make the streets and parks of the inner CBD a "dry zone". The issue had been under consideration by the council since last year, when it commissioned a market research organisation to conduct meetings of residents and businesspeople on the issue. After the meetings showed strong opposition to the dry zone, the issue was shelved.
However, for the past month, the local press and talkback radio have run a hysterical law and order campaign against people who consume alcohol on the streets of Adelaide. The state government then threatened to go over the council's head and declare a dry zone. The day the council voted to impose the dry zone, Liberal Premier John Olsen offered the council $500,000 to establish a detox centre.
David Wright, chairperson of the Inner City Agencies Group, addressed the council and pointed out that the dry zone targeted Aboriginal people who traditionally gather in open spaces and are most often refused service in pubs. It also affects the homeless and people with mental health problems. Wright asked what the council was doing about major problems in the CBD such as the severe shortage of temporary accommodation and increasing drug usage.
Former QC Elliott Johnson also spoke eloquently against the dry zone. He said a dry zone result in more indigenous people in prison, in breach of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Back Deaths in Custody the Royal Commission.
The motion to support the dry zone was put by Councillor Michael Harbison, a Liberal candidate for the state seat of Adelaide. His claim that he could not walk through Victoria Square without falling over drunken Aborigines was greeted with derision from a public gallery packed with concerned residents, Aboriginal activists and representatives of church and welfare groups.
Councillor Greg Mackie, speaking against the motion, told the council that there were already laws in place to deal with drunken behaviour. He added that people who were likely to break the dry zone laws were also unlikely to be able to pay the fines and would be incarcerated.
Councillor Judith Brine said long-term solutions had not been discussed and groups affected had not been consulted. She said the council was more concerned with repression, control and finding a quick-fix solution.
When the council voted in favour of the dry zone, the public gallery erupted. Holding signs with "No dry zone" and "Shame", they berated the councillors with shouts of "racists" and "Shame Moran, shame", referring to Anne Moran, who had previously opposed the dry zone, but supported it after an amendment she had proposed was accepted.
In the April 4 Adelaide City Messenger, political commentator Terry Plane condemned the council's decision as a "simplistic, racist response to a complex issue". Figures from a survey which had been widely quoted in the media claimed that 84% of respondents were in favour of a dry zone. In fact, Plane explained, 75% of respondents were not concerned about Aborigines drinking in Victoria Square; 53% believed a dry zone would not combat rowdiness or abusive behaviour; 67% believed that the city was safe in spite of public drinking; and 91% did not agree that public drinking harmed tourism.
Plane pointed out that "the dry zone proposal did not arise in response to the problems of public drunkenness around such city hotels as the Havelock and Seven Stars [two of Adelaide's upmarket watering holes]. Young, respectable, middle-class drunks ... regularly cause a mess and nuisance in Hutt and Carrington streets. Is this dry zone aimed at them?", Plane asked.
Plane called instead for the establishment of a Kaurna cultural centre in Victoria square, as a recognition of the significance of the area as a traditional meeting place for Kaurna people.