Victoria police will continue to play a role in responding to public drunkenness when it is decriminalised in November, according to state government documents, in a move that has raised the ire of the police union and the state’s Aboriginal legal service.
A draft service framework for the new health-based response to public intoxication describes police as being responsible for delivering a “secondary response” when primary health workers are not available, including “due to limitations in geographic coverage and times”.
“A secondary response will be provided entailing: Victoria police as the presumptive provider of outreach and transport, under their existing community safety role, where the primary response is unavailable,” reads the framework, released as part of a tender process for service providers.
The Police Association of Victoria’s secretary, Wayne Gatt, said he had not been informed of officers’ role in the new model.
He said while he was supportive of decriminalising public drunkenness, the plan as outlined in the draft framework would place a “considerable burden” on first responders.
“What do you call a ‘second responder’ who is called upon to act as the first response in an overwhelming majority of cases? A first responder,” Gatt told Guardian Australia on Tuesday.
“We told the government back in 2020 that retrofitting a complex health-based response model and infrastructure to a press release was an unwise way to govern on a complex social issue.
“Rather than invest the time and money into developing a considered health-based response to those found drunk in public, they’ve opted largely to stick with the status quo.”
Under the new health-based response, intoxicated people will have to provide consent to receive assistance from the “public intoxication service”, which includes immediate support such as providing minor first aid, food and water, phone charging and support to locate friends or family.
They can then be offered transport home or to a friend or family member’s, another safe place or a sobering-up centre, where they will be monitored by health workers. Follow-up and referrals to other organisations may also be offered within 48 hours.
The draft framework states police cells should be not used for the sole purpose of intoxication, and escalation to police “should only occur in exceptional circumstances where there is a real and immediate risk to community safety”.
The government committed to repealing public drunkenness laws in the wake of the inquest into the death of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day in 2017, but the implementation of the response to replace the offence was delayed 12 months due to Covid-19.
Nerita Waight, the chief executive at the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (Vals), said the government must guarantee the new model “will not involve Victoria police once it is fully implemented”.
“If Victoria police must have any role, including as a temporary measure while the public health model is rolled out to more regions of Victoria, their role must be strictly limited,” Waight said.
“The threshold for the involvement of Victoria police must be high, they should not have the power to detain someone in a public place when identifying a safe place where the person can sober up, and they should only be able to provide transport in strictly limited circumstances.”
Waight said if Victoria police do provide transport for an Aboriginal person who is intoxicated in public, they should be required to inform Vals’ custody notification service.
Data from Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency shows 3,181 public drunkenness offences were recorded across the state in the year ending June 2022.
The government is currently seeking registrations of interest to operate the new model, which includes a six-bed sobering-up centre in Melbourne for Aboriginal people and dedicated outreach services in cities and regional centres.
Victoria and Queensland are the only jurisdictions in Australia to still have a specific offence for public drunkenness, which the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody found had disproportionately affected First Nations people, and recommended that it be abolished.
In January the government confirmed it would not be providing police with new arrest powers.
On Tuesday afternoon a Victorian government spokesperson said the new health-led model prioritises the safety and wellbeing of intoxicated people and “help reduce deaths in custody”.
“We continue to … be guided by health experts, communities and services championing these reforms,” the spokesperson said.
“We know that existing public drunkenness laws have had a disproportionate impact on Aboriginal people in Victoria and are working with Aboriginal-led organisations and communities to provide culturally safe and appropriate services.”
