It’s been almost six years since Tanya Day hopped on a train to Melbourne but never made it to the city.
The 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman was arrested for being drunk in public on 5 December 2017 after she fell asleep. She was placed in a police cell to sober up, suffered a head injury and later died.
Her death led the Victorian government to commit to repealing the offence of public drunkenness, three decades after the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody had recommended its abolition.
But with just a week to go until its new “health-based response” comes into effect, there are concerns the government is not prepared.
Its sobering-up facility in Collingwood has yet to be completed, emergency service workers remain confused about their role in the new scheme, and it comes into effect on Melbourne Cup Day – one of the busiest days in the state for drinking and frivolity.
The Police Association of Victoria’s secretary, Wayne Gatt, said he supported decriminalisation in principle but the government’s handling of the reform had “lurched from ill-considered to woefully underprepared”.
“Despite repeated calls for the government to adopt progressive reform with a dose of common sense, it has forged ahead recklessly,” he told Guardian Australia.
“We have engaged with the government on this reform since 2019 and all of the issues we raised four years ago remain … just days out from this reform being introduced.”
Under the government’s plan, being intoxicated in public will no longer be a criminal offence. It will instead be treated as a health issue. Outreach teams will patrol the streets and transport people to a sobering-up facility if required.
The reform was initially set to come into effect on 7 November 2022 but was delayed by a year. The delay, blamed on Covid-19, meant that instead of beginning on a Monday, it would start on Melbourne Cup Day.
There has been little said publicly about earlier trials, though several Aboriginal-led organisations involved were selected to deliver care to First Nations people in the outer suburbs and regions.
Community health provider cohealth, which was involved in one trial, was chosen in August to run outreach for the general population in Melbourne, as well as a 20-bed, 24/7 sobering-up centre in Collingwood.
But the government conceded at the weekend that the facility would not be ready until late November.
Chris Turner, cohealth’s deputy chief executive, said a “lot of attention” had been placed on the centre but there were only “very limited circumstances” during the trial when it was required.
“First and foremost, this is about making sure people who are intoxicated in public are supported to be safe,” he said.
“It can be reconnecting them with their friends, it can be helping them charge their phone so they can book an Uber, or giving them a bottle of water while they sober up.
“It can be waiting with them while they get picked up, taking them to their parents or friend’s place, or to their home, and in very limited circumstances it’s about taking them to the place of safety.”
Going forward, Turner said, cohealth would have up to 10 outreach teams – comprised of nurses and alcohol and drug workers – out each night, and they would also be available for callouts.
He said an existing trial site, which has six beds, would remain open until the larger facility opens later this month.
‘Reckless’ introduction
But for emergency service unions, there are concerns the new rules will actually make Victorians less safe.
Gatt said that without move-on powers, the police would be able to intervene only when an offence had been committed.
“When it comes to dealing with intoxicated people, there are ‘yes’ people and ‘no’ people,” he said. “The ‘yes’ people are relatively easy to deal with. The ‘no’ people are the ones that, up until November 7, police would remove from the situation because they were either a threat to themselves or others.
“What happens to the ‘no’ people now that police can’t remove them? We can’t predict the exact circumstances that will unfold, but we can predict that someone will get hurt at some stage as a result of the reckless way this reform has been introduced.”
The Victorian Ambulance Union secretary, Danny Hill, said he feared what would happen to an intoxicated person who refused helped, given the new model is consent-based.
“It would be awful if you had a situation where someone was stumbling home and fell in front of traffic or was sexually assaulted,” he said.
“The government have accepted that’s a person’s right to decide if they don’t want help, but it’s going to be very hard for our members to just walk away from that.”
A leaked Victoria police training video, first aired on 7 News Melbourne last month, showed officers leaving a heavily intoxicated woman alone on a park bench after she refuses their help.
A police spokesperson confirmed the reenactment was part of a mandatory e-learning training course and acknowledged the response was a “significant change to the way many Victoria police members operate day-to-day”.
“Our members instinctively want to assist the community – that is why they became a police officer,” the spokesperson said.
“However, under the changes, there will be times where members will leave drunk people where they are, particularly when they are deemed not to be a safety risk to the public or they refuse assistance.”
They said the training had been rolled out to most police and public service officers ahead of next week.
The opposition’s spokesperson for police, Brad Battin, has called on the changes to be delayed and said the training footage was confronting.
“If Victoria police and the Victorian government think that’s OK, they’re wrong,” Battin said.
But Turner said a key piece missing from the police training video was the fact officers could call an outreach team.
“I do think it’s worth noting that there is going to be that referral number which police and emergency services can call,” he said.
“While someone may not give the police consent to help, there is nothing stopping the officers from just flagging that someone may need a hand. It could be as simple as asking if there’s an outreach team in the area to swing by.”
The premier, Jacinta Allan, said on Tuesday that police and ambulance workers would continue to play a role “providing that additional support to people who need a little bit of extra help”.
“If they can’t get access to a sobering-up centre, they can get support through our hospital system.”
Allan said it was important not to lose sight of the purpose of the reform.
“At the moment, too many Indigenous Victorians are ending up in a jail cell simply for being drunk in public. It shouldn’t be a crime,” she said.
For Day’s family, the changes are long overdue.
“Our mother would still be here today if laws criminalising public intoxication were repealed over 30 years ago,” they said in a statement.
They were yet to receive a public apology or acknowledgment from police of the role they played in their mother’s death, they said, and would continue to fight for independent oversight of police.
“The burden of driving all this work should not be left to people who have had a family member die in custody,” the family said. “Governments must be more proactive in getting on with the job and doing what is right.”
