The Turnbull government has quietly begun a review of Australia's safe-drinking guidelines after
the "low risk" level of alcohol intake was halved overnight amid accusations of nanny statism.
The five-yearly review of the guidelines, running behind schedule, was kicked off by the government this month with the selection of a 14-member panel to scrutinise the guidelines for the National Health and Medical Research Council.
There are rumblings the process is captive to anti-alcohol public health advocates who will ensure the review maintains or even stiffens the current standards.
The alcohol industry is calling on federal Health Minister Sussan Ley to rethink the composition of the alcohol working committee – where some members have links to the pro-abstinence temperance movement – before its work starts.
At two standard drinks a day, Australia has one of the strictest standards in the world for alcohol consumption deemed unharmful.
Men and women are advised to drink no more than two small glasses of wine a day, or 1½ full-strength beers, under guidelines introduced by the National Health and Medical Research Council in controversial fashion seven years ago.
By comparison, Japanese authorities advise men they can safely drink four units of alcohol – about three stubbies of beer or four small, 100-millilitre glasses of wine a day – without risking long-term health effects.
Market research commissioned by the federal government in 2011 found the current drinking guidelines are "considered unrealistic (too low) and confusing" by the public.
Fairfax Media can reveal two members of the review panel have direct associations with the temperance movement, Christian-linked bodies in Australia and Europe that have spent more than a century campaigning for "alcohol-free social interaction".
Temperance societies succeeded in having entire Melbourne suburbs such as Camberwell and Box Hill declared dry areas in the 1920s.
Panel member Michael Livingston is a board member of the Australian Rechabite Foundation, part of the Independent Order of Rechabites, founded in England in 1835, which promotes "total abstinence from alcoholic beverages".
Tanya Chikritzhs, a fellow panel member, has accepted flights and accommodation from Swedish temperance movement IOGT-NTO, according to her conflict-of-interest disclosure with the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Panel chairwoman Kate Conigrave, a respected public health doctor based at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, is a board member of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.
A submission from the foundation to the World Health Organisation's global non-communicable disease action plan, dated September 1, 2016, states: "Latest available evidence supports the statement that there is no level of alcohol consumption that is without risk to health."
Peak industry body Alcohol Beverages Australia believes the panel is stacked against producing a "believable" set of guidelines for consumers.
"The government or even the Commonwealth Ombudsman needs to step in to enforce the conflict-of-interest rules to ensure that the advice underpinning these guidelines is produced by experts who are genuinely objective," said Alcohol Beverages Australia executive director Fergus Taylor.
"Australian government drinking guidelines have to be evidence-based and believable to be trusted. The 2009 guidelines were derailed by anti-alcohol activists that had already campaigned to have a two drinks safe-drinking limit overseas, giving us unrealistic guidelines that have been widely ridiculed and ignored."
Samantha Robertson, executive director of governance at the NHMRC , said the committee was subject to conflict disclosure requirements. She said the committee was made up of a balance of experts in drug and alcohol research, epidemiology, biostatistics and modelling, addiction, mental health, clinical public health, fetal alcohol syndrome, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and consumer advocacy.
"In appointing members to the committee, consideration has been given to achieving a balance of scientific expertise and experience, with any interests, in order to obtain a diverse range of input on alcohol.
"The draft revised guidelines will be subject to independent review to ensure the process by which the underpinning evidence has been interpreted and synthesised is appropriate and in accordance with the latest knowledge on the topic of interest. All methodological and expert reviewers are required to declare any interests relevant to the matter under investigation."
Ms Ley, who did not authorise the panel selections, left the NHMRC to comment.
The 2009 guidelines, which cut safe drinking for males from 28 units a week to 14, were derided because the Canadian research they relied on modelled "absolute lifetime risk of death" from alcohol-related accidents, which included the increased chance of injury from a fall.
While many public health advocates agree that the public largely ignores the safe-drinking standard, bodies such as the Cancer Council use the guideline to warn that any level of drinking can lead to premature death.
The president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation Alex Wodak, who says people view the current guidelines as "not in sufficient contact with reality", said the 2016 review had to "balance science and communication".
"They have to stand up to scientific scrutiny but also seem reasonable to most members of the public," he said.
Kypros Kypri, of Newcastle University's school of medicine and public health, said there was a disconnect between the government's responsibility to warn of what is a one in- 00 risk of long-term damage from very light drinking and what the public views as reasonable advice.
"There is not some naive assumption that government says here are the guidelines and people are immediately going to change their behaviour overnight, but the government has a responsibility to convey the potential level of harm it knows exists," he said.
Drinkwise, which is funded by the alcohol industry, said its research indicated a level of angst among consumers.
"A couple will say, 'We share a bottle of wine over dinner at a restaurant and by definition we become risky drinkers'," said Drinkwise chief executive John Scott.
CURRENT ALCOHOL HEALTH GUIDELINES
- No more than two standard drinks on any day reduces the lifetime risk of harm from either alcohol-related disease or injury.
- No more than four standard drinks on a single occasion reduces the risk of alcohol-related injury arising from that occasion.
- For children under 18 years, not drinking alcohol is the safest option.
- Standard drink: 1 middy full-strength beer/100ml wine/30ml spirits
