Archive Article: Schoolies Week 27th November 98
December 23, 2008

Schools are finishing and now the drinking begins. The annual “schoolies week” is underway and the police are busy making arrests.

I have just returned from Brisbane. The Queensland media are full of stories of the way in which a huge contingent of under-cover police officers are tackling the 7,000 teenagers who have converged on Surfers Paradise alone for the Schoolies Week. Although the uniformed police presence has been highly visible, the majority of arrests have been made by plain-clothes officers mingling in the crowds.

Schoolies Week is, of course, simply the precursor to the long alcoholic binge leading up to and beyond Christmas and the New Year. The adults will soon join the students in the consumption of alcohol.

Kids aren’t stupid. It is foolish for adults to lecture kids on why they ought not to drink, when the kids can see the adults drinking. Kids are very quick to detect hypocrisy.

This is a reason why the national and state governments are wrong to have a “harm minimization” strategy for drinking alcohol. The governments – irrespective of the political party in power – have a policy of setting a maximum number of drinks.

The governments ought to have a policy of opposing all alcohol. First, if something is wrong, then it is totally wrong. To suggest that there is a safe minimum amount suggests that it is not perhaps all that bad.

Second, the governments do not advise that there is a safe minimum number of cigarettes that may be smoked each day. On the contrary, cigarette packets carry a health warning. The same should be done for bottles of alcohol. Each bottle should contain a health warning that drinking alcohol is also a health hazard.

Third, the best way to stop drinking throughout society is to change the culture. In other words: make drinking an unfashionable past-time. We are making some headway with smoking, which is now seen by many people as being an activity for “losers”.

Banning something simply drives the activity underground and into the arms of the criminal world. There has also to be a clear community rejection of the practice. Therefore education has to run in parallel with prohibition. But it is difficult to educate the population about the dangers of drinking when the government itself makes it respectable to have a minimum safe dosage.

Finally, it is important for there to be role models who can show that life can be great without alcohol. I play my own small part in this because I often speak at youth events – usually on world affairs – and I always find a way of commenting that it is possible to have a good life without alcohol.

But we need more and better role models to carry out this work. There is a deplorable lack of role models for young people – especially for young males – from among their own younger members of society. Too many of them seem to be advertisements of what we would like the kids to avoid – rather whom we would like the kids to follow.

BROADCAST ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 27 1998 ON RADIO 2GB’S “BRIAN WILSHIRE PROGRAMME” AT 9 PM, AND ON NOVEMBER 29 1998 ON “SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE” AT 10.30 PM.