Dr. Ciara Reynolds:

I will be as brief as possible. I thank the Senator for his questions. I will go through two of the items he mentioned. On the uptake of licensing, it is more likely to be the cities which will take up the extended licensing hours. We know there is already disproportionate harm related to alcohol in cities, particularly in terms of road traffic accident victims who have levels of intoxication found in the blood. Second, in terms of the dispersion of the crowd, we have seen cases where other countries hoped this would be the case when they extended licensing hours, however what was actually found was just a shift in the alcohol-related harms until later in the night which actually ended up putting more pressure on policing, emergency services, ambulance call-outs, emergency department visits, and hospitalisations in relation to alcohol related injury and trauma.