Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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The clip shows aspects of alcohol abuse in the early 1980s in the north of Western Australia, including in the Indigenous population. Susan Bradley, a justice of the peace in Kununurra, presides over a case in which an Aboriginal man who had lost his job is charged with public drunkenness. In voice-over she describes the alcohol problem in remote communities such as Kununurra and her frustration at the futility of fines and the lack of facilities for rehabilitation as well as her motivation for becoming involved in the community.

Educational value points

• The clip reveals the inadequacy of the legal system in dealing with alcohol abuse and alcoholism in rural and remote communities that have no rehabilitation facilities. Susan Bradley stresses the inadequacy of fines, which as part of the Police Act she must impose on those who are found guilty of being drunk in a public place. She talks about her frustration with the absence of facilities in Kununurra for those with drinking problems.

• From her experience as a justice of the peace Bradley links unemployment and boredom with alcohol abuse. The example in the clip of the young man suggests that alcohol abuse is a particular problem for people who work in rural industries that may provide only seasonal work. The young man charged with public drunkenness had been working at the Ord River station for six months but had been recently ‘put off’. He had travelled to Kununurra and expected to be there until the next cattle season the following year.

• Bradley identifies a lack of self-respect, which she says has been ‘taken away’, as an important factor in causing alcohol abuse among some Indigenous Australians. Alcohol and other substance abuse in Indigenous communities have been linked to dispossession from traditional lands and a consequent loss of cultural identity, self-determination and sense of purpose, particularly among young men.

• The clip indicates that Bradley takes her position as a justice of the peace seriously as part of her involvement in the isolated and small rural town of Kununurra. A justice of the peace is a volunteer who is commissioned by the governor of the state and who swears an oath to serve the community. After a period of training they take on a range of duties including the witnessing of documents. In remote areas justices of the peace are required to preside in magistrate’s courts.

• This clip from The Flying Vet, a 1984 film that focuses on Bradley’s husband, highlights Bradley’s work as a justice of the peace in Kununurra. As a non-Indigenous woman in a position of authority in the community she expresses sympathy for Indigenous people who come to the magistrate’s court. In the 1980s very few Indigenous people had access to legal education or training and they were rarely in such positions of authority.