SCUAAC Briefing 9 February 1994 Mr Steve Gelding District Manager representing the Department of Health and Community Services
Tabled Paper 345
Tabled Papers for 7th Assembly 1994 - 1997; Tabled papers; ParliamentNT; Tabled Papers
1994-12-01
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https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00042
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/290544
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/402612
ALCOHOL ABUSE COMMITTEE - Wednesday 9 February 1994 KATHERINE MEETING scrub literally blind drunk. The taxis still continue to go out. I think it is $100 a trip Mr LANHUPUY: It is $100 to Barunga at the moment. Mr GELDING: $100 just for the taxi. Mr LANHUPUY: It is $250 or $300 to Beswick. Mr GELDING: That goes on and on. Taxis pull up at the Kirby's bottle shop, are loaded up and out they go. That is an ongoing problem and it is something that the community has great difficulty in dealing with. Mr MCCARTHY: I take it they are not taking it into a restricted area. They are leaving it outside the ... Mr POOLE: They say the taxi rank was moved just outside the dry area. Mr GELDING: Yes. Mr ORTMANN: Do people go in to do the buying or is the driver doing the buying? Mr GELDING: What they will often do is ring the taxi from Beswick. Thus, there is the money to go out. The taxi drivers are just in business. They go out, come back, load up and go back out. Mr POOLE: They are not supposed to. They are supposed to have a customer in the cab with booze ... Mr GELDING: They will actually go out to Beswick. Mr ORTMANN: Oh, they will go out and pick the bloke up. Mr GELDING: I am told that it also happens the other way. Mr LANHUPUY: Somehow it still happens. Mr GELDING: There are other ways. They have the booze bus at Mataranka which goes out to the Roper. They just ring up and place the order, but they have to go to the police station and obtain permission to deliver it by bus. If that is stopped, all that happens is that the people charter a plane. Mr ORTMANN: When there were shorter take-away hours, did you notice a difference in the town - and I am talking of both sides of the community - as opposed to when it went back to the longer hours? Was there a real groundswell of disapproval by the general community about the shorter hours? Mr GELDING: I certainly remember being caught out a couple of times by not being able to get into the bottle shop 10