West Australia’s former police commissioner is urging the state’s director of liquor licensing to consider a police proposal to restrict the sale of alcohol across dozens of regional towns.

Deputy Police Commissioner Allan Adams wrote to Liquor Licensing Director Lanie Chopping in August last year, asking her to consider imposing tough liquor restrictions across the Kimberley, Pilbara, Midwest-Gascoyne and Goldfields-Esperance regions.

Commissioner Adams asked Ms Chopping to do this by exercising her powers under section 64 of the Liquor Control Act, which she used in March last year to impose restrictions on the Gascoyne town of Carnarvon following a rise in alcohol-fuelled violence.

The Carnarvon restrictions limit customers to purchasing 11.5 litres of beer (approximately one carton), cider or pre-mixed spirits with an alcohol percentage of less than 6 per cent, or 3.75L (approximately two sixpacks) of anything stronger.

Customers are also limited to 1.5L of wine (two bottles) and there is a 1L limit on spirits and fortified wine.

Bottle shops can only trade between 12pm and 7pm on weekdays and must be closed on Sunday and Monday.

‘Worrying about the bureaucracy’

Mr Adams said similar restrictions should be implemented across 25 other regional towns.

A spokesman for Ms Chopping told the ABC she was not considering the proposal, and was only looking at extending restrictions in the tourist town of Broome and the port city of Derby.

Former police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan said he hoped the director would choose to look at the proposal.

“I think it’s bureaucracy gone mad, really,” he said.

“All we’re doing is worrying about the bureaucracy of liquor license management.”

A surge in violence across WA’s north prompted Commissioner Adams’s letter to the director, with data reportedly showing “an unacceptable ongoing level of harm attributed to the sale and supply of packaged liquor”.

Crime statistics from WA Police show the number of offences across regional have increased from 64,887 in 2021-22, to 74,132 in the last financial year.

A statewide problem

Mr Adams’s letter to the director is not the first attempt by WA police to influence alcohol restrictions across the state.

In 2020, then-commissioner Chris Dawson made a similar application to the director, but kept the scope of his request to the Pilbara and the Kimberley regions.

Mr O’Callaghan said while it was clear the Kimberley had an acute issue with alcohol, it was not unique.

“I think we always focus on the Kimberley as being a problem, but the Goldfields [are too],” he said.

“This is a statewide problem and unless we do something about it, we’re going to lose a whole generation of young people to alcohol addiction.”

Alcohol restrictions in WA’s north were a key focus during Mr O’Callaghan’s tenure as WA police commissioner in 2007, when he was responsible for driving community-led discussions with a group of Fitzroy Crossing women about alcohol restrictions.

June Oscar — now Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner — led the charge for restrictions on the sale of takeaway alcohol, in response to soaring rates of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) and increasing violence in the community.

While the restrictions made a difference in the Fitzroy Valley, sly grogging (selling liquor without a licence) has continued to have an impact on locals.

‘Almost a Third-World problem’

Mr O’Callaghan said the need for region-wide restrictions were nothing new.

“This has been around for a long time now,” he said.

“I don’t see [this proposal] getting anywhere, unless governments and the liquor industry are brave enough to want to do something about it.

“It’s almost a Third-World problem.”

State government ministers, including Premier Roger Cook, have previously offered tentative support for alcohol restrictions in different parts of the state.