PROBLEM drinkers in the Northern Territory are being set up like "little black ducks in a shooting gallery" by the government's punitive new drinking laws, a prominent criminal lawyer says.
Russell Goldflam, president of the Criminal Lawyers Association NT, says the Banned Drinkers Register (BDR) was minimising alcohol abuse before the new Territory government did away with it.
"We have just thrown away an effective tool aimed at the very people most at risk; the government (will) be locking up the people they've now allowed to drink," he told the Central Australian Grog Summit in Alice Springs on Tuesday.
"In a place where a vast majority of violence is alcohol-related, turning on the tap is a guarantee that crime will go up."
The BDR had been sending the message that drinking was a privilege and not a right, he said.
The NT government began abolishing the register the day after winning the August 2012 election.
Dr John Boffa, NT's 2012 Australian of the Year and People's Alcohol Action Coalition spokesman, said that since 2006 alcohol sales had decreased, from 15.5 litres of pure alcohol per person per year to 13.5 litres.
He attributed this fall to setting a floor price for alcohol and the BDR.
But he said he was awaiting government figures that would show that alcohol sales have gone up for the first time in six years because of the alcohol policy changes.
"Getting rid of the Banned Drinkers Register gave back 2,500 people a license to drink," he said.
The NT government had also previously discussed reinstating alcohol in remote communities.
It has introduced mandatory alcohol rehabilitation for problem drinkers who are picked up by police three times in a three-month period.
But Mr Goldflam said this policy criminalised addiction, and did not allow legal representation to be provided to people being assessed and treated under the program.
Meanwhile, the BDR has been replaced with Alcohol Protection Orders (APO) which police can now issue to anyone charged with an alcohol-related offence.
The orders carry a minimum penalty of six months imprisonment, and can be made to last for three, six or 12 months.
Mr Goldflam said if someone breached an APO, they don't get treatment for addiction.
"Banned drinkers will be set up like little black ducks to be sent to jail," he said.
Bayden Williams, a spokesman for the Hermannsburg community, said Aboriginal people needed to take leadership on the issue of alcohol abuse.
"The past, I don't think it's going to let go of us," he said.
"It's up to us to start moving forward, to be strong, to tell the government, 'listen to us, because we're sick of listening to you'."
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