A Queensland inquiry is considering reforms to laws banning begging, public urination and public intoxication. Many hope it goes further.
Queensland’s peak legal body has backed broader law reforms that could see people arrested for swearing at police, as the state moves to act on a narrower set of long-awaited legislative changes.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, asked if she supported the call to overturn public intoxication laws this week, stopped short of explicitly supporting change, but accepted her state was the last to act. A total of 2102 people were charged or fined for the offences in 2021. Public intoxication charges accounted for 1256 of those, with half of the offenders identifying as Indigenous, despite only making up 4.6 per cent of the population.
“Such laws should only be initiated when it is in the public interest to do so, in a manner that does not disproportionately affect socially or economically disadvantaged groups,” he told this masthead in a statement. Brunello warned that any change to public intoxication laws needed to also ensure public nuisance offences – which fall under the public order banner but carry higher penalties and include disorderly or offensive behaviour or language – were not used by police instead.
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