Schoolies: A Proper Risk Assessment is Required

• 

• Annual Schoolies Week Event

• Each November marks the end of Year 12 for thousands of Australian school leavers and the start of the rite of passage event known as Schoolies which is predominantly held on the Gold Coast but also held in other locations in Australia and overseas.

  Teenagers, some of whom have turned 18 and some who have not, flock to event locations where accommodation packages, organised activities and emergency services are available to them during a week-long period to celebrate the end of Secondary Schooling.

  The events are organised with military precision and there are armies of volunteers and paid workers engaged to guide, rescue, repair and repatriate teenagers who get into trouble. There are numerous and repeated incidents of binge drinking, misadventure, unsociable behaviour, fighting, arrests, injuries, illnesses and in the worst cases, death. On average there has been one Schoolies related death each year over the past decade.

  During Schoolies the nightly news is dominated by the previous 24 hours of teenager bad behaviour, the cringe-worthy behaviour of ‘toolies’ (older men who attempt to join in the fun with teenagers) and detailed evaluations by senior police and ambulance officers of the injuries, brawls and incidents of bad behaviour which have occurred this year compared to previous years. The running tally of brawls, arrests, injuries and other incidents makes for news which can sometimes rank higher than the bombing of innocent children in Syria.

  The majority of Schoolies attendees are well behaved but each year a minority behave badly (and dangerously), however this behaviour is tacitly accepted by the government and the community. The government provides additional tax-payer funded resources to the Surfers Paradise region and parents book their Year 11 offspring into Schoolies a year in advance.

  By comparison, the overwhelming majority of the general public who visit nightclubs, hotels and music venues throughout the year are well behaved, but it only took the bad behaviour of a minority to bring about the imposition of lock-out laws which have affected the viability of many licenced venues and associated businesses.

  Clearly, a double standard exists between the nanny-state (overly protective) lockout laws which affect the entire adult population every day of the year and the unspoken approval of teenager binge drinking during Schoolies. It is obvious that the same standard of risk assessment and mitigation has not been applied to both circumstances.

  The link between alcohol and domestic violence is well established and more than a third of all domestic assaults involve alcohol. Queensland police respond to more than 200 domestic violence incidents every day and in December 2015 the Queensland Government appointed a Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence. The rise in alcohol fuelled misbehaviour in and around licenced venues led the same Government to introduce the tough lock-out laws in an effort to reduce the potential for alcohol fuelled violence. However, the same decision principles have not been applied to Schoolies and it is illogical for a government to take action in respect to domestic violence and the alcohol consumption of the general public but at the same time support events which tolerate large-scale binge drinking by adolescents.

  While many Schoolies attendees will have consumed alcohol prior to attending the event, the Schoolies environment is vastly different to their previous experiences and the majority of 18 year olds do not have the skills or life experience to know how to:

  • resist peer group pressure in an environment where there is heavy drinking by 1,000's of people;
  • manage the physical and emotional effects of their own heavy drinking; or
  • react to the actions of other schoolies or toolies (cringe!) who are drunk, boisterous and possibly violent.

  The rite of passage to becoming an adult is not historically connected with binge drinking or the repeated exposure to high risk situations but for reasons this writer does not understand, this has become the normalised situation for year 12 school leavers in Australia.

  Even though there are emergency response measures in place, the responsive approach to Schoolies alcohol related risk doesn't prevent the incidents from occurring in the first place. It is easy to respond to a drunk and passed out teenager but it is usually impossible to save any person who has fallen from a high rise balcony. The reduction of alcohol related incidents over a period of time doesn't make the remaining incidents any more acceptable. There is no acceptable level of preventable injuries or deaths.

  A thorough assessment of the effect of Schoolies activities on the short and long term health of the participants and the long-term economic impact (health, damage, opportunity cost) will almost certainly indicate an unacceptable level of risk. A review of the number of alcohol related incidents by the general public over the course of a year compared to the number of incidents in the Schoolies period will show that the same assessment standards have not been applied when deciding to implement the lockout laws but allow the Schoolies concept to grow.

  Contact us to discuss a risk assessment and implementation of management strategies for your property or body corporate.

  About the Author

  Craig Coleman OAM, CSM is a principal consultant at Axinto. He has more than 35 years experience working in hostile, remote, complex and difficult environments. He has wide-ranging leadership experience in the development and implementation of multidimensional and challenging projects in the defence, mining, development, construction and disaster response sectors.

  Read LinkedIn bio

Journal Articles