BY EMMA MURPHY
ADELAIDE — The August 13 City Messenger ran a front-page article that supported abandoning "dry zone" by-laws in the South Australian capital's city centre.
In the article, the Catholic Church's vicar-general Monsignor David Cappo, who chairs the state government's Social Inclusion Board, was quoted. Cappo pointed out that a dry zone targets Aborigines and does not address the social problems contribute to alcoholism. "This sort of policy ends up being racially discriminatory", Cappo said.
The dry zone was introduced in October 2001, as a 12-month trial. The Adelaide city council then voted to extend it for another year, claiming that crime in and around central Adelaide's Victoria Square had been reduced.
However, as Cappo pointed out, crime is simply being pushed elsewhere, and homeless people who lived in the city centre have moved to parklands outside it. Nothing has been "solved", Cappo noted.
Drinking "in public" is an issue that local governments and the media frequently highlight in cities and regional centres that are home to large numbers of Indigenous people. Legislation has been passed in the Northern Territory targeting "serial drunks" and aimed at removing "itinerants" from the streets of Darwin and Alice Springs. Presented as a solution to crime, particularly violence, you don't need to scratch very far below the surface to find the racist implications of such legislation.
There are many reasons why Indigenous people drink in parks and squares, rather than in pubs or at home. One clear reason is racism: many Indigenous people do not feel welcome in pubs. For many Indigenous people in Alice Springs, the creek bed is their home — at least while they're in town. In Darwin, the "long-grass" people's homes are outdoors. Similar situations occur in many places.
Many Indigenous people feel more comfortable being outside. There are practical reasons: parklands are be more suitable places to socialise for families with children. (It is a common racist stereotype that all groups of Indigenous people who gather in the open are drunks.)
Clearing the streets of "serial drunks" and "itinerants" are simply racist euphemisms for removing the Indigenous, the poor and the homeless, using the motto, "out of sight, out of mind". So tourists in Alice Springs, for example, can have their big night on the town, stumble from pub to pub, without being confronted with how others live.
It is true that alcohol abuse and dependency often contribute to violence. Alcoholism and domestic violence are serious problems that have to be tackled throughout the community — whether it takes place in the streets or behind the walls of comfortable suburban homes. Are the concerned law-makers tackling these huge social problems? Again, it's a case of out of sight, out of mind.
It is interesting how quickly the Adelaide city council takes action against groups of Aboriginal people sitting together enjoying a drink in a park, yet does little about the carloads of drunk white blokes who rev their cars up and down Rundle Street and yell sexist insults at women waiting at the lights.
I know what makes me feel more uncomfortable.
From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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