Slides and texts of presentations to workshops, symposia and conferences
(In order from most recent)
Swensen, G.
Regulation of alcohol and tobacco by local government in Western Australia: Opportunities for innovation? An exploratory study.
Paper presented at the 49th Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium of Kettil Brunn Society, Fremantle, Western Australia, 27 to 31 May 2024.
The paper explores the involvement of local government authorities (LGAs) in Western Australia (WA) to reduce alcohol and tobacco-related harms through policy initiatives and community-level measures.
This paper highlighted the use of broader powers available to LGAs through a public health framework, beyond the planning powers identified in earlier research, to broaden the role of local government to implement community-level policies to mitigate alcohol-related harms within a public health framework.
The paper considered developments following earlier research (published in 2016) which described the approach adopted by the City of Subiaco to regulate the display of alcohol advertising in public spaces by use of it’s planning powers, as statutory powers and mechanisms to regulate alcohol-related advertising in public spaces, building facades and the use of public infrastructure such as bus shelters, roadside and street furniture to address community-level concerns about the normalisation of alcohol through advertising.
The paper also considered a recent initiative of the City of Vincent to regulate tobacco smoking in public spaces by use of another regulatory framework available to LGAs, public health-based powers, as an exemplar of the use of public health measures to reduce secondary harms from alcohol use, such as ‘passive drinking’ related-consequences in public spaces.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (1.7MB) of a set of the 16 slides that were presented at the symposium.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (559k) of the draft paper that supported the presentation.
Swensen, G.
History of the role of mental health services in Western Australia of managing problematic users of alcohol.
Paper presented at the 45th Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium of Kettil Brunn Society, Utrecht, Netherlands, 3 to 7 June 2019.
The paper presented findings from an exploratory study of how the mental health system in WA managed problematic users of alcohol from 1900 until recently and how this role evolved over the period from a custodial to a treatment emphasis.
The research considered the role of mental health services as a setting for managing problematic users of alcohol and of how this interacted with and supported broader policies to regulate of the use of alcohol, to minimise its harms and to maintain social order, within a broader framework of governmentality.
The research strategy involved the compilation and review and analysis of a matrix of historical as well as more recent information which identified a number of eras to manage problematic users of alcohol in WA. The first era involved a custodial focussed approach performed by the mental health services, from 1900 through to the mid 1970s. A major reform from mid 1970s established a public health model and most recently, since the mid 1990s, the creation a community-based quasi-market model of specialist treatment providers.
The exploratory nature of this research considered a range of legislative texts, historical materials, official records and statistical data to interpret the evolution of the role performed by the mental health system in managing problematic users of alcohol.
The purpose of the research is to examine whether the detention and treatment of inebriates in the first era, was a form of moral regulation that assuaged community concerns about disorder and a lack of personal responsibility as part of a broader system of controls that sought to heavily regulate the use of and access to alcohol.
The proposition that the use of alcohol requires controls rests on a conflicted understanding about alcohol, that unfettered use of alcohol should be constrained through a regulatory framework of liquor licensing and other legislation, as otherwise it represents a risk to social order, to community well-being and is harmful to some groups of the population.
Therefore, as a system of regulation is posited as inevitable, because it is a ‘manifestation of an anxiety of freedom that haunts modern liberal forms of rule,’ this raises the question of why the mental health system played such a pivotal role in WA, for about 75 years, in managing problematic users of alcohol.
It is argued the mental health system should not be seen as acting in isolation from other regulatory mechanisms, but that it functioned as one component of a broader framework of controls, such as the criminal justice system, which had a long history of punishing public drunkenness and other public order consequences associated with alcohol.
In addition, there are other regulatory mechanisms involving controls on access to sale and use of alcohol in liquor licensing laws and prohibitions which had historically targeted Indigenous people through ‘native welfare’ legislation of obtaining alcohol.
It is argued the framework of provisions in inebriate and mental legislation over the period up to the 1970s enabled the alcohol industry to be lightly regulated, as the causes of alcohol-related mental disorders, as well as public drunkenness and other consequences from problematic alcohol use, were regarded as individual shortcomings, not regulatory failures.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (661k) of the paper presented.
Swensen, G.
The management of problematic alcohol users in Western Australia.
Paper presented at the 12th Annual Limina Conference, Perth, Western Australia, 27 to 28 July 2017.
Though the prodigious use of alcohol in Australia is a well-known, if not celebrated, feature of Australia’s ‘national character’ since colonization, what is not so well-known is the institutional arrangements, in addition to those deployed by the criminal justice system that managed those whose use of alcohol was regarded as problematic.
This presentation described the history of the role performed by the mental health system from when WA was established as a colony in the 1830s until the early 1970s, of providing the framework for the custodial managemenmt of those affected by alcohol from either acute intoxication, who were alcohol dependent or had other alcohol-caused mental disorders.
The presentation outlined how legislative and administrative provisions in so-called inebriates and lunacy legislation, as well as subsequent mental health laws, were used to confine and compel the non-voluntuary ‘treatment’ of inebriates.
The unrecognised significance of an alternative ‘voluntary’ regime developed from the 1920s, under a different legislative framework set out in the Mental Treatment Act 1917 (MTA) was be examined in relation to the voluntary ‘treatment’ of those with alcohol-related mental disorders.
The MTA had been adopted to treat veterans from the First World War with mental disorders of ‘recent origin arising from wounds, shock, disease, stress, exhaustion, or any other cause’ to be treated separately from asylum-based confinement that operated under the Lunacy Act 1903 and Inebriates Act 1912. A key feature of the framework established by the lunacy/inebriates legislatiion was their reliance on certification and commitment. Subsequent amendments of the Mental Treatment Act 1917 enabled a broader range of people, not just war veterans, to be admitted without certification to a ‘reception home’ or a ‘hospital for the insane’.
The presentation also traced the development since the 1970s of a public health system in WA based on the voluntary admission to a separate system of treatment facilities. This commenced with the Alcohol and Drug Authority Act 1974 and was part of a major reform to create a broader approach to the management of problematic use of alcohol, encompassing prevention, education and treatment.
The public health model also replaced a system of novel civil commitment that had been adopted in WA in the early 1960s, under the Convicted Inebriates Rehabilitation Act 1963 (CARA). The CARA established a court ordered system of detention and treatment of problematic users of alcohol within a low security prison, which occurred after the mental health system resisted continuing to accept people for detoxification and treatment, after the passage of new mental health legislation in the mid 1960s.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (1.5MB) of a set of 37 slides presented.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (312k) of the draft paper that supported the presentation.
Swensen, G.
Management of public drunkenness in Western Australia 1900 – 2010: The courts, police, prisons and health services.
Paper presented at the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Conference, University of Adelaide, 10 to 12 December 2015.
The paper identifies how in WA between 1900 and 1975 institutional-centric policies were supported by the criminal justice and mental health systems to punish and/or restrain individuals with problematic use of alcohol. The outcome of these policies, which were underpinned by the criminalisation of public drunkenness, resulting in extraordinary high rates of both convictions in the Magistrates Courts and imprisonment in its prisons, as well as civil commitments to asylums, of large number of problematic users of alcohol.
This meant that up until the mid 1920s about one third of all types of charges dealt with by the Magistrates Courts involved public drunkenness charges. It was found that convictions for public drunkenness of Indigenous people were relatively uncommon, typically making up about one in 20 of all charges until the late 1940s. However, this rate subsequently increased to about one quarter of all charges and Indigenous persons made up about one third of all commitments in the WA prisons system until the early 1970s.
A number of other consequences were identified, such as variations in offences related to gender during World Wars I and II and of how whilst relatively few Indigenous people were dealt with the courts over the first four decades, from the beginning of the 1960s the representation of Indigenous people for public drunkenness increased.
The study that by the late 1960s the reliance on rigorous law enforcement measures became discredited and engendered support for a stand alone health system, apart from both the public hospital and mental health systems, to assume responsibility for delivering treatment services on a non-coercive basis, to problematic users of alcohol as well as other drugs.
The punitive approach to problematic users of alcohol was found to have its roots in the State’s colonial heritage which suppported a system of harsh and escalating punitive consequences. Surprisingly, this had originally been devised in Tudor times in England and was continued as the response to public order issues when the Swan River Colony was settled in 1829 by Britain. The colonial origins of these repressive policies was found to have continued over the period when WA was a British colony, when it became a self-governing colony in 1890 and continued after it became a state when it federated and became part of the Commonwealth of Austalia in 1901.
The implications were considered in particular for Indigenous people of this approach of detaining and confining problematic users of alcohol to mental asylums as ‘inebriates’ and the criminalisation of public drunkenness and how it supported the operation of a system of discriminatory apartheid-like controls to control the use of alcohol in WA until the mid 1960s.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (1.7MB) of a set of slides that were presented.
Swensen, G.
Public space and alcohol advertising: Exploratory study of the role of local government.
Paper presented at the Alcohol policy research thematic meeting of Kettil Bruun Society, Melbourne, 8 to 11 September 2014.
The presentation considers there is a potential but under-recognised key role for local government to support measures to manage the problematic use of alcohol through its well-established power to regulate public health and safety in public places by implementing policy measures and adopting local laws to regulate the advertising and promotion of alcohol in public places.
It is contended there should be a community-based approach to regulating alcohol advertising in public places. It is argued this has been overlooked in favour of the system of industry self- regulatory frameworks for alcohol advertising developed and focussed on the printed and electronic media. The widespread community concern about the proliferation of alcohol-related advertising in public spaces was recognised in a review by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Affairs, Reclaiming public space, published in July 2011.
It is argued that as local government ‘owns’ most of the public space in Australian cities it has a key role to regulate alcohol advertising in public places, arising from its responsibility for and provision of public infrastructure such as footpaths, roads, bus shelters and street furniture like seating and bins.
The paper includes a case study involving the City of Subiaco, a Perth metropolitan local authority, as an illustrative example of how a set of well developed policies and statutory instruments have been adopted to manage alcohol advertising in public spaces within a specifc locality.
The paper also suggests that for local government to undertake this role of regulating alcohol advertising some of the constraints and impediments it faces need to be considered. This includes that advertising can represent an important source of revenue and that local authorities need to develop a community-based decision-making and oversight model to avoid the poor record of oversight that has occurred through the industry self-regulation model.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (2.1MB) of a set of slides that were presented.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (479k) of a draft paper that supported the presentation.
Swensen, G.
The problematic use of alcohol – a law and order perspective: Policing of transgression in public places and the maintenance of public order.
Presentation at the 8th Annual ANZSOC Postgraduate Conference, University of Sydney, 30 September 2014.
Click here to view or download a PDF (38k) version of a poster that was shown.
Click here to view or downloaded a PDF (1.1MB) of a draft of the draft paper that supported the poster.
Swensen, G.
Fifteen years of cannabis law reform in Western Australia: 1998 – 2013. Some lessons for future reform.
Paper presented at the Critical Criminology Conference, Flinders University, 22 to 23 July 2013.
The presentation discussed three cannabis depenalisation schemes which operated in Western Australia (WA) over the 15 year period from 1998 to 2013:
- the Cannabis cautioning mandatory education scheme (CCMES) which operated from 1998 to 21 March 2004,
- the Cannabis infringement notice (CIN) scheme which operarted from 22 March 2004 to 31 July 2011 and
- the Cannabis infringement requirement (CIR) scheme which has operated from 1 August 2011 up to the present.
The presentation included a discussion of the legislative frameworks that were utilised to establish these schemes, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1981 and the Cannabis Control Act 2003. It also refers to the Misuse of Drugs Amendment (Cannabis Cautioning Notices) Bill 1999 and the Poisons Amendment (Cannabis for Medical and Commercial Purposes) Bill 1999, both of which failed to be passed by the Western Australian Parliament.
Statistical data about the operation of the CIN and CIR schemes was also referred to, presented in tables and figures in the text of the presentation.
The paper suggests that over the 15 year period since 1998 the three reforms did not result in liberalisation of cannabis laws in WA. It is argued on the contrary these reforms were regarded as opportunities for governments to increase the repressive nature of penalties of existing offences and make amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1981, such that these reforms further criminalised and penalised those who use cannabis.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (834k) of the text of the presentation, which consists of a total of 38 pages, 21 pages of text, 13 tables, 7 figures and 3 slides.
Swensen, G.
Approaches to managing public drunkenness, Western Australia, 1900 to 2010.
Paper presented at the 37th Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium of the Kettil Bruun Society, Melbourne, Victoria, 11 to 15 April 2011.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (938k) of this paper.
Swensen, G.
The role of the community in liquor licensing decision making
Paper presented at the Murdoch Law School Research Day, 8 November 2010.
A major reform of the Liquor Licensing Act 1988 was flagged in September 2006 when the Western Australian (WA) Government introduced the Liquor and Gaming Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. Of particular interest in this package of reforms was the introduction of a ‘public interest test’ in place of the previous ‘needs test’ to be used by licensing authorities.
The amendment means that applicants for either a new license or renewing an existing liquor license will need to undertake a public interest assessment (PIA), which will include the ‘social, community, economic and health implications and/or benefits’ of the application. (Explanatory memorandum, Liquor and Gaming Legislation Amendment Bill 2006.)
The bulk of this reform package came into effect in May 2007 (the extension of opening hours for liquor stores commenced 17 December 2006) and resulted in the Act being renamed as the Liquor Control Act 1988. These reforms were described as not being merely evolutionary, but represented a major relaxation in the approach to the consumption of alcohol, according to a statement.
‘In 2006, the State Government initiated the most significant package of reforms to liquor licensing in more than 100 years. The reforms focus on providing more choice for consumers, but not necessarily more licensed venues; promoting greater levels of innovation within the liquor and hospitality industries; providing opportunity to the small business sector; assisting the tourism sector cater for thousands of visitors to Western Australia; focussing on and promoting harm minimisation principles; and creating a safer liquor environment.’ Background to liquor reform, Department of Racing Gaming and Liquor
The presentation considered whether this claim may be credible be given there were major reforms of the State’s liquor licensing laws to create a framework for a high level of input by the community and oversight of the activities of hotels as part of the reforms which had been part of the Licensing Act 1911. There were two periods of structured community input under this legislation, from 1911 to 1921 through local option polls and from 1925 to 1950 when Statewide prohibition polls could be held.
The presentation considered the results from these polls and reforms over the period from 1911 up to 1950 which formed a structured and restricted form of community input into decision-making by the liquor licensing industry.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (1.4Mb) of a set of 32 slides used for the presentation.
Swensen, G.
An exploratory study of the use of the criminal law to regulate the use of alcohol by Indigenous people in Western Australia 1900 – 2010.
Paper presented at the Murdoch University Post Graduate Students Association Multidisciplinary Conference, 29 September 2010.
The presentation considered features of the system of laws and administrative arrangements which operated in WA over this 110 year period which regulated the availability of alcohol and the accompanying measures that managed problematic users of alcohol, who were regarding as having transgressed the framework of rules about the acceptable use of alcohol.
From the earliest years of European settlement it was apparent alcohol had a profound and destructive impact on the lives of Indigenous people and how this justified a system of controls on access to and use of alcohol based on racially differentiated criteria. Whilst this occurred throughout all the Australian jurisdictions, the experience of how Indigenous use of alcohol was managed in WA was examined.
The regulation of access by Indigenous people to alcohol can be understood as one of a wide spectrum of exclusionary and assimilative policies deployed to deal with the ‘native problem’ from the establishment of the colony of WA up to the present day because of the immense social and economic disadvantage Indigenous people have incurred from colonisation.
The specific issue of public drunkenness has for much of this history involved the police in performing an ill-suited role of enforcing unworkable laws based on old English public order offences. This approach has meant the management of the use of alcohol by Indigenous people has been heavily shaped by the shortcomings of the criminal justice system in ‘solving’ problems involving socially marginalised and disadvantaged groups.
The outcome of the decriminalisation of public drunkenness in WA in 1990, largely instituted in response to the work of the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, will also be considered and of whether it was a lost opportunity for developing a different understanding of the place of alcohol in Australian society in the lives of Indigenous people.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (582k) of a set of 28 slides use for the presentation.
Swensen, G.
A study of the use of the criminal law and other sanctions to manage public drunkenness in WA: 1900 to 2010.
Paper presented at the Murdoch Law School Research Day, 6 May 2009
The presentation outlined a study of the legal mechanisms that operated and sanctioned a range of punitive and custodial options for managing public drunkenness in WA over the period from 1900 up to the present. The study will also consider the array of legal and administrative measures over the period of time adopted to restrict access to and use of alcohol by specific groups, such as problematic users of alcohol (eg prohibition orders), women and Indigenous people.
The study identified a number of eras when a combination of measures, involving the licensing laws that regulated the consumption, sale and supply of alcohol in WA, the measures that were adopted to rehabilitate or punish problematic users of alcohol and the adoption of ‘special measures’ to resstrict access to alcohol.
The first era was from the early 1910s up to the early 1960s when a system of civil commitment was established under the Inebriates Act 1912-1919, such that a problematic user of alcohol could be committed to a mental hospital. This system remained on the statute books until repealed by the Mental Health Act 1962.
The second era was from 1963 to 1974 when the Convicted Inebriates’ Rehabilitation Act 1963 (CIRA) was in force in WA. This permitted Magistrates to imprison an offender who had committed a summary offence where drunkenness was an ‘element or contributory cause’ of the offence. This era of coerced rehabilitation within the prisons system, overseen by the Convicted Inebriates Board, enabled a person to be sentenced as a ‘convicted inebriate’ for a term of up to twelve months within a designed low security prison farm.
The third era was from 1975 to 2005, after the abolition of the Convicted Inebriates Board and its replacement by the WA Alcohol and Drug Authority (WAADA) in November 1974. Although the Alcohol and Drug Authority Act 1974 continued with the power to obtain a court order to sentence an inebriate under the CIRA, this power was apparently never used up to when the CIRA was repealed in November 1989.
The next era followed the passing of the Detention of Drunken Persons Act 1989, which came into operation in April 1990, following the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. This reform resulted in the establishment of sobering up centres, most of which are based in the North West of the State and largely used by Indigenous people.
Click here to view or download a PDF version (1.1Mb) of the text of the presentation.