Queensland has become the last Australian jurisdiction to consider the decriminalisation of public intoxication, in a move service providers say is “long overdue”.
At a parliamentary inquiry on Monday, human rights advocates and service providers expressed unanimous support for the decriminalisation of offences such as public intoxication, begging and urination.
Kaava Watson, the director of network development at the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health, said reforms were desperately needed in the state.
“We support the decriminalisation of the three offences,” Watson told the inquiry.
“It is well established that these offences have a disproportionate impact on Indigenous people.
“Shifting from a criminal justice response to a health and welfare response is compatible with human rights.”
It comes three decades after the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody’s final report recommended abolishing public intoxication as a criminal offence.
Queensland is the only state not to have adopted these recommendations, after Victoria passed a bill last year to decriminalise public intoxication after the inquest into the death of Indigenous woman Tanya Day.
In New South Wales, the crime of public drunkenness was abolished in 1979 and replaced with legislation allowing police to remove intoxicated individuals from the streets.
The state’s Human Rights Commission also supported the move towards decriminalisation but flagged it was “very concerned” it could lead to a spike in public nuisance charges.
“The public nuisance offence is of course a higher level offence than the offences that we’re discussing,” its deputy commissioner, Neroli Holmes, told the inquiry.
“[We] want public nuisance charge to be very restrained and only [used] as a last resort if [the] person isn’t impacting on their safety or others.”
Holmes warned against punitive responses that involved over-policing, saying people should only be held in police watch houses when absolutely necessary.
“Police cells are not safe places for people who are intoxicated to go to, very often they’re unsafe places,” she told the inquiry.
Queensland’s public advocate, Dr John Chesterman, told the hearing that Queensland needed a properly resourced health response to deal with these offences.
“We know that Queensland police officers are not trying to deliver a health-based response,” Chesterman said.
“Yet we know one of the main points of access is … [contact with] police or first responders.”
Bridget Burton, director of human rights and civil law practice at Caxton Legal Centre, said the offences made it difficult for vulnerable people who often struggled to pay fines and meet strict bail conditions.
She said one of her clients was remanded in custody after police found him lying on a bench next to a sign asking people to donate money for food.
Police charged the man with begging and claimed they arrested him for his own welfare, Burton told the inquiry.
“We have other clients who’ve been held for over a month on remand before … being given bail conditions that they could never comply with because of their underlying disability … and being put back into remand,” Burton said.
“So what we have is homeless people … [dealing with] some quite considerable periods of incarceration, relative to the very minor nature of the offence.”
Kate Greenwood, a barrister from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, told the inquiry she assisted one man after officers charged him with public consumption of alcohol.
She said police had parked beside a local park and used binoculars to see that the man was drinking.
“In the grand scheme of things, [that] probably wasn’t the most appropriate response to either help someone who was homeless or had other issues. Nor was that particularly impacting on public safety,” Greenwood said.
“The criminal justice system is not a particularly fit-for-purpose system for dealing with questions of just pure public intoxication.
“I would submit that these charges are very much due for being abolished.”
The hearings continue, with a final report due on 31 October.
