Poor Rob Thomas made a comment about Australians being big alcohol drinkers. He also said that the traditional owners, that is, the aborigines, were heavy drinkers as well.

For this he had to apologise.

Why?  When he only spoke the truth.

Australians do drink. In fact, for them it’s a rite of passage. Heavy drinking is responsible for car accidents, domestic violence and violence in the streets. In fact,  being drunk has been used as a mitigating excuse for breaking the law. “I didn’t know what I was doing, your Honour,  cause I was pissed.”

The hospitals are overwhelmed on the weekend by drunks who are violent towards nurses and doctors.  Aggressive behaviour combined with the use of other drugs chokes our health system and it is the genuinely sick people who cannot be treated in our emergency departments because of these drunks who waste our precious resources.

There is hardly an event in Australia that doesn’t involve drinking. Watching sport? Have a beer. Fishing? Have a beer.  Watching TV? Have a beer. It’s hard to think of any occasion that doesn’t involve drinking alcohol.

Now, I have nothing against drinking in moderation, but being too drunk to remember what you did seems to be the ambition of many revellers and that is pathetic.  It could be our colonial heritage that is to blame.  Who knows why?

A few years ago someone wrote a song about a pub with no beer. It was amusing but also prophetic and it became one of those iconic songs in Australia.  Seems to me it would be hard to imagine a greater tragedy for the majority of Aussies than running out of grog.

It’s a pity that poor Rob Thomas had to cop it for telling it the way it is.