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Queensland considering making public drunkenness a crime
Less than a year after laws decriminalising public drunkenness came into effect, the Queensland Government is considering making it a crime again - despite an outcry from First Nations, legal and human rights advocates. In September last year Queensland became the last state to decriminalise being drunk in public , more than 30 years after the move was recommended by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. On Wednesday Liberal National Party Police Minister Dan Purdie, a former officer, said the Government was looking at introducing laws making public drunkenness and public urination offences again, saying their removal had "hamstrung police".
But First Nations and human rights advocates say it's yet another move in the wrong direction for the Queensland Government, which has introduced a raft of 'tough on crime' measures since David Crisafulli's LNP swept to power in October last year. Greg Shadbolt, principal legal officer of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal service for Queensland, told NITV that there was "absolutely no basis in logic" to reintroduce laws criminalising public drunkenness. "If someone's intoxicated and does something untoward like turns up and kicks a rubbish bin, they can still be arrested, so it simply doesn't stand up to any form of scrutiny," he said. "There's no reason why being intoxicated without actually doing anything untoward of itself should be an offence."
The National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, said the proposal was a deeply irresponsible move and an attack on Aboriginal lives. Spokesperson Tabitha Lean, a Gunditjmara woman, said the National Network rejects the idea that the only way to respond to public drunkenness and public urination is through police and punishment. "Public health issues require public health responses, not criminal charges," she said. "This latest move shows once again that the lives and safety of Aboriginal people are expendable in the LNP's political playbook."
Public drunkenness laws have long been used as a tool of racialised policing and criminalisation, disproportionately targeting Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people, Debbie Kilroy said, pointing out that was the reason the royal commission recommended scrapping them. NSW decriminalised public intoxication in 1979. A state parliamentary report looking at decriminalising offences affecting vulnerable people found a strong correlation between intoxication and higher risk a person will die in custody.
"This is not about safety, it's about punishment, surveillance, and scapegoating," Ms Kilroy said. "We cannot forget the death of Yorta Yorta woman Aunty Tanya Day, who died in custody in 2017 after being arrested under public drunkenness laws, while asleep on a train (in Victoria). "Her death was entirely preventable – she should have been cared for, not criminalised. "Her family, like many others, have been tireless in their fight to abolish public drunkenness laws and demand dignity and care instead of police violence." Victoria decriminalised public drunkenness in November 2023, thanks to advocacy by Tanya Day's family and other members of the Aboriginal community.
Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall told Guardian Australia that a move to re-introduce the laws would "represent another blow in a continuing assault on the rights of First Nations people in Queensland'. 'Police do not lack the powers to respond in the interests of community safety," he said. "The solution to these behaviours is a much greater investment in health and prevention. 'To reintroduce a public drunkenness offence would signal that the Queensland government has no interest in Closing the Gap or reducing deaths in custody.'
On Tuesday LNP Townsville MP Adam Baillie told Parliament that public intoxication wasn't a new problem. "Under Labor public drunkenness and public urination laws were revoked, paving the way for the antisocial behaviour that has been plaguing our great city for years," he said. "It is only getting worse." Ms Kilroy called on the Queensland Government to implement the royal commission recommendations, including keeping public drunkenness decriminalised.
"This is not just a policy decision, it is part of a broader 'law and order' blitz by the LNP, who continue to rely on carceral responses and fearmongering in the absence of any meaningful vision for the state," she said. "Rather than investing in housing, health care, or community-led responses to harm, the LNP are doubling down on the same racist, harmful strategies that have already cost too many lives."
