…Alcohol remains the major destructive “element” across all Australian society. We need urgently a Nicola Roxon, (The darling of social reform), equivalent on the Alcohol front!

...As tradition dictates from the Liberals, there appears no light on the horizon for any chance of Alcohol reforms inside Tony Abbotts team “Dullard”.

Diver Dan: there is some good movement on the Liberal side of this argument, with Federal support for alcohol reform to address excessive availability in the NT, and some moves towards a bi-partisan approach to the taxation and floor price issues

Alcohol abuse is currently the biggest blight on our society. If tobacco is so heavily taxed and required to be sold in plain packs covered in warnings and gruesome pictures - WHY not alcohol?

Yes I've heard the arguments about pensioners being unable to afford their evening stubbie or glass of cask wine if the price increases ... blah blah blah! So what? It's not a life staple.

It's time the powerful Alcohol Industry is reined in along Tobacco industry lines. If this were to happen there would be huge benefits to national health, law and order, work productivity, family and wider relationships. Banning is neither desirable nor workable but making it more expensive and less accessable may result in a pendulum swing back towards a more moderate era.

I'll vote for THAT!

DF:

...The difficulty in achieving reforms with Alcohol and Gambling are quite different to Cigarette reforms achieved by Nicola Roxon; the opposition voice of Cigarette addicts was a soft one from a minimal 16% of the population!

...An interesting comparison would be opposition to gun control in the US, where opposition to reform screams over the top of all logic. The voice of “Alcohol addicts” is a loud cultural one sung in unison, inside the Opera House of the Club and Hotel Associations: These two groups are never satisfied until Alcohol flows down the gutters of every town in Australia!

Alcohol abuse starts by peer pressure. This in turn is a mentality issue. If young people could be exposed to healthier thinking such as in two years of National Service they would acquire a healthier mentality & alcohol abuse would lessen.
For a national service to be introduced we have to change the mentality of those in authority now & start replacing them.

Diver Dan: I must concede that you are most probably correct; but that shouldn't prevent the bulk of the Australian population from being able to discuss the obvious issues, and debate and advocate sensible reforms to current laws and regulations surrounding alcohol availability, regulation, price, taxation and supply without attack from addicts, other users and the economically vested interests which you mention.
We should be able to discuss these matters calmly, and develop policy based on evidence and informed majority opinion, despite the rabid die-in-a-ditch opposition of some alcohol manufacturers, retailers and users, and a few extremely vocal fanatical "free-choice" individualists who can't understand the need to balance personal behaviour choices with concessions to what society can bear and the central requirements of "the common good".
This means we should seek rational, democratically based regulation of alcohol availability, rather than open-slather exploitation by the dominant forces in the market-place and dictatorship by isolated pockets of anti-regulation pro-grog ideologues, such as some of those at the Institute for Public Affairs.