Over the weekend footage emerged of the Prime Minister skolling a beer at a pub with a group of AFL players from a Sydney university. Is it inspiring or heart-warming? Not really. Does it scream dignified leadership? Hardly. Does it set an outstanding example? No.

Is it the biggest issue I have with Tony Abbott? Far from it.

According to the National Health and Medical Research Council “Alcohol is responsible for a considerable burden of death, disease and injury in Australia. Alcohol-related harm to health is not limited to drinkers but also affects families, bystanders and the broader community.”



There is no doubt that alcohol is extremely problematic in Australian society. Against that backdrop the Prime Minister skolling a beer in record time is precisely not the behaviour we want or need replicated.

Equally, I am reluctant to say Tony Abbott is single-handedly increasing alcohol’s burden on society for having downed a beer on a Saturday night. If it were a regular occurrence or the PM had a documented history of abusing alcohol (beyond what is recorded about his university days) perhaps it would be different.

Tony Abbott is nothing if not a picture of physical health and it seems tenuous to extrapolate with too much certainty that he is personally propagating a national crisis with alcohol.

There are many substantive shortcomings in Tony Abbott’s leadership but, from this vantage point, skolling a beer isn’t one.

Last week the former mental health adviser to the Labor government, John Mendoza, was on ABC’s 7.30 talking about the Federal Government’s review into Australia’s mental health system.



Mendoza, who late last year lost his nephew to suicide, had a simple message: the current system isn’t working and leadership is needed to change that.

“It has to have national leadership. Tony Abbott has to take this forward. He pledged so in opposition. He made a very big point about this. He stood shoulder to shoulder with me, with Pat McGorry, the Australian of the Year, not just in 2010, but subsequent to that. I want to see the Prime Minister take a lead role in this. He knows what needs to be done and it’s not going to be done through Health ministers. This is a whole-of-government challenge. And if we do not do this, Leigh, our country will be much poorer and we will not be in a position, I don’t believe, in 2025, to continue to invest the sort of money that we’ve been investing to date, and as the commission says, getting a very poor return on that investment.”

On Friday after the COAG meeting, which resulted in a commitment to have a national DVO scheme implemented within a year, leaders from domestic violence support services echoed Mendoza’s sentiments. Leadership is needed.

“This is a national crisis. The political importance of the leaders of our country standing together, speaking with one voice, to say that violence against women must end, cannot be underestimated,” said Fiona McCormack, CEO of Domestic Violence Victoria.

Comprehensive funding to frontline services and primary prevention to tackle this problem is needed.

“We called on COAG to deliver robust, long-term and adequate resourcing for the National Plan, and they didn’t,” Moo Baulch, CEO of Domestic Violence NSW said.

“We are looking to the State/Territory and Federal budgets to deliver on the commitment to turn ‘words into action’ by announcing dedicated funding streams to end violence against women. Violence against women is preventable. But we need adequate funding to be able to end it.”

Mental health and domestic violence are two major problems in Australia right now that desperately need leadership. Will the Prime Minister please stand up?