Newspaper discussion about rugby league concentrates on the ability of the former coach and his replacement to "beat the booze culture" in the Kangaroos. The Police Commander in the Sydney suburb of Macquarie Fields, Stuart Wilkins, says powers to crack down on alcohol sales would help curb street violence. Just today's contribution to the drug debate already bubbling along nicely after the Cronulla riots.

Stir with the child of a State Premier apparently ko'd by an alcohol spiked drink during schoolies week. Shake it up with the normal reports of Christmas party rapes and bashings. Goodness knows what the outcome of this renewed publicity about the evils of drink will be but this is certainly a climate in which the alcohol industry should be concerned. Just as racism is alive and well in Australian society so too is the temperance movement. The forces which over the last 30 years have led to the liberalising of liquor licensing laws are about to have some opposition.

A starting point in the renewed fight against alcohol will be opening hours. The special legislation the NSW Government is introducing at this week's emergency parliamentary session might be the response of political spin doctors to the need to be seen to be doing something after the weekend's violence. The outcome still will be police having greater powers to curb alcohol sales. And curb them they will because there is no one on active police duty who does not see more than half their daily workload created by alcohol abuse. Expect to see far more of the "voluntary" curbs on closing hours and restrictions on entering a licensed premise within an hour of closing time. Publicans should get ready for inspectors actually enforcing those supposed prohibitions on serving drunk people. A couple of well publicised fines on major hotel chains like Woolworths and Coles is all that will be needed for a government pretending to change a culture.

The kind of culture that saw the retiring Australian rugby league coach Wayne Bennett lament this week: "I'm sick of the drunks and I'm sick of our game being dragged through every media outlet in the country every time some guy behaves badly, because every time a rugby league player behaves badly, he behaves badly because he's affected by alcohol."

Mr Bennett's comments followed a Sydney newspaper article which said Ricky Stuart had been appointed to "beat the booze culture" inside the Kangaroos following the team manager's report on the recent tour of England tabled at the ARL board meeting in Brisbane on Monday that was "highly critical of binge drinking". The article claimed the report, by former policeman John "Chow" Hayes, said some drinking sessions lasted 48 hours.

Mr Bennett, himself a teetotaler, said: "Don't tell me Ricky Stuart or somebody else is going to do a better job because they'll go and drink with the boys and the boys will behave themselves better just because they're drinking with him. Just look at the Sydney Roosters' track record over the last four or five years with some of their bad behaviour and you tell me whether that approach works or not. I'll go another step further. Last year Ricky was New South Wales coach. They had four guys on security full time with that team to make sure they behaved themselves. I had no one on security with me on our team to make sure our players behaved themselves."