Last month, the Northern Territory (NT) Director of Liquor Licensing approved Woolworths’ application to build the proposed Darwin Dan Murphy’s, despite the overwhelming evidence that the store will cause further harm, and against the strong objection of local communities. Read more about the situation here.  

But community leaders in the NT have not given up on their fight to stop Woolworths from building this alcohol megastore on their doorstep. 

Listen to Thomas Mayor giving an impassioned speech on Larrakia Country, discussing how Woolworths is continuing to ignore and silence the voices of Darwin’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. 

“[Woolworths] use their privilege and their power to ride over the top of the Government here — and the Government compliantly stepped aside — to ride over the top of what the people are saying, to ride over the top of that little community Bagot that has been standing against so much for so long. And they're going to do it unless we stop them.” 

On 25 January, the Global Drug Survey released new survey findings, collected from over 110,000 people worldwide in 2019. 

A key finding is that Australian respondents reported ‘getting drunk’ an average of 31.8 times in the past year, the third highest amongst countries, behind Scotland and England. 

The Global Drug Survey also surveyed Australians in June 2020 and found they were more likely to report an increase in the frequency of alcohol use since COVID-19 restrictions as well as a decrease in the amount they drank. 

Last week FARE made a submission to the Aspirations for the Food Regulatory System consultation, which proposes a set of high-level actions to inform broader modernisation of the food regulatory system. FARE’s submission focused on the need for alcohol to be comprehensively regulated within the food regulatory system and to ensure that public health outcomes are prioritised ahead of industry commercial interests.  

In March 2020, the Australian New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation endorsed an implementation plan for an ambitious reform agenda for the food regulatory system aimed at ensuring the system remains strong, robust and agile into the future.