Kalkadoon man Jeffery Doyle is fed up with drunk visitors littering and fighting on his country in Mount Isa.
"They just come here and party," he said.
"You can hear them in the morning, swearing and fighting. They've got no shame.
"Something needs to be done."
Mr Doyle is one of the thousands of residents and community leaders across north Queensland who are calling on the state government to introduce a banned drinker register (BDR) and other measures to curb alcohol-fuelled violence and other challenges.
Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill, Cairns Mayor Bob Manning, and Mount Isa Mayor Danielle Slade have this month written a letter to Deputy Premier Steven Miles.
It calls for the state government to take "more drastic actions … to address existing challenges, as well as challenges that are arising from changes to the security situation in the Northern Territory".
A BDR is a record of those banned from purchasing take-away alcohol.
Community leaders argue a BDR will discourage itinerants who have been travelling to other communities from the NT to avoid recently-introduced alcohol bans.
Since the NT introduced those bans, Mount Isa has had an increase of hundreds of people living rough with thousands of dollars spent by the local council on cleaning up alcohol containers around the town.
"They're everywhere now, Territory mob," Mr Doyle said.
"This is my grandmother's country. They shouldn't just come here and disrespect us mob here."
Councillor Slade said the town was not equipped to handle the increase of people.
"Mount Isa is not resourced in any way to help these people who are coming here to our community to access alcohol," she said.
"They're a burden on police, they're a burden on health, on ambulances."
'Fatal' consequences a possibility
The influx of people is putting pressure on social services like the Riverbed Action Group Outreach and Support (RAGOS) in Mount Isa.
The group's four staff members struggled to serve more than 500 vulnerable people last week.
"Services in this town are already stretched," said the acting chief executive of North-West Queensland Indigenous Catholic Social Services, Will Blackley.
"Now, we're really struggling."
Mr Blackley said he expected fatalities as a result of the lack of services.
"Being an alcoholic has a whole range of different health problems that come with it, so if they're not able to access services then we could have dire consequences. There'll be fatalities down in the riverbed," he said.
He said a BDR would help ease the pressure.
"The sort of laws that have been brought into the NT should be introduced nationwide," he said.
Nolan Holmes is a Northern Territory resident and has been in Mount Isa since December.
He first ventured across the border to visit family.
"We've lost our family, we drink to help with how we're feeling: sad and lonely. We lost our family, that's why we just keep on drinking," Mr Holmes said.
"It's really bad for us, we try to keep away."
Complete overhaul needed: mayors
Community leaders said a BDR was only part of the solution.
They said more needed to be done to improve the overall quality of life for those impacted by alcohol and to improve services aimed at disadvantaged families as well as perpetrators of crime.
A full audit of the Department of Children, Youth Justice, and Multicultural Affairs was needed as "very few, if any, of these service providers, are having any success in rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders into the community," the letter to the deputy premier said.
Meanwhile, better housing and more sufficient legal sentencing were flagged as areas needing immediate improvement.
"Our community is sick and tired of this and we need solutions," Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill said.
"We're willing to work with the state government to develop programs that actually work."
Cr Manning said solutions for youth crime and substance abuse needed to target the home environment.
"The seed for this goes back to how some of these young people are housed, and how they're brought up, and how they miss out on some of the features of life that some children get," he said.
"This is where the most damage can be done."
Premier says register would be 'hard to administer'
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the deputy premier was happy to discuss the proposal but more detail would be needed about how it would work and be funded.
"It's their proposal, they need to state very clearly how they would implement it," she said.
"From an outsider looking into it, I think they may have trouble bringing it in because it would mean tradies, families, mums and dads having to produce ID in those large cities to get alcohol.
"It would be very hard to administer that.
"There's practicalities involved, imagine a tradie going home after a hard day on a construction site or building house and having to find his ID to get a six pack or get a bottle of wine to take home to his wife."
