EMERGENCY doctors who spend their weekends dealing with victims of drunken violence have called on the federal government to follow NSW's momentum in tackling alcohol-related harm.
Sexual assaults, dying car crash victims and surviving drunk drivers and coward punch victims are some of the cases Victorian emergency physician Dr Stephen Parnis deals with on an average weekend.
He told reporters in Sydney on Thursday there was no doubt there was more alcohol-related harm victims fronting hospitals than when he started 21 years ago.
"I could fill a book with the number of tragedies I have seen from treatments and admissions that are directly related to alcohol," the Australian Medical Association (AMA) Victoria president said.
Dr Parnis said it was well and truly an epidemic.
"It's time for major change, time for a parliamentary inquiry into the issue and a national summit," he said.
The AMA has welcomed proposed measures put forward by the NSW government on Tuesday, including earlier lock-outs in party hot spots and harsher penalties for alcohol and drug related crimes.
But the association believes it does not go far enough.
It wants to see the federal government convene a national summit to come up with solutions to the alcohol misuse epidemic.
The summit would bring together government, councils, police, health experts, teachers, victims and industry.
AMA federal president Dr Steve Hambleton said Australia needed leadership from the federal government and support from the states.
According to the AMA, at 2am in an emergency department, about 20 per cent of people are there because of alcohol-related trauma.
Perth intensive care specialist Professor Geoffrey Dobb said sometimes he went to work in the morning and half of the people in intensive care were there due to alcohol.
"An action that lasts for just a second can impact on people for the rest of their lives," he said.
The effect of alcohol misuse also extends to children, with tens of thousands of cases each year of alcohol-related child mistreatment, the AMA says.
Prof Dobb said there needed to be a change in the drinking culture in Australia.
While the group is looking to the commonwealth for help, Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters on Wednesday people should not rely on the government to stop alcohol fuelled-violence.
He said governments could make it easier for people to be jailed, but they could not solve the problem.
"People have got to take responsibility for their own lives, recognise the impact on people that they may hurt as the result of some silly drunken violence but also on their own lives."
The AMA's call comes just days after the NSW government announced a suite of reforms to target drunk and drug-fuelled violence.
The proposed laws include the creation of a fatal one-punch offence that would carry a minimum eight-year jail sentence if committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
They also include 1.30am lock-outs and 3am last drinks at bars and clubs across an expanded Sydney CBD entertainment precinct.
Other proposed reforms are mandatory minimum and longer maximum sentences for serious alcohol-fuelled assaults, 10pm closing times for bottle shops and new powers allowing police to administer drug and alcohol testing to suspected offenders.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has thrown his support behind the AMA's proposal, saying it wasn't a problem in just one small pocket of Sydney.
"It isn't just a challenge for local and state governments. This is a national issue that demands national attention," he said in a statement with Labor health spokeswoman Catherine King.
Mr Shorten said the community owed it to innocent one-punch victims like Daniel Christie, who died after being assaulted in Kings Cross on New Year's Eve, to face up to the problem of alcohol-fuelled violence.
He said a national summit was the most appropriate way to bring key groups together, including the hotel industry and health experts, to work in partnership with government to tackle the issue.
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell said it was up to the federal government to decide whether a national summit on alcohol was necessary.
"These are problems that extend beyond state borders," he told reporters on Thursday.
"The prime minister has made clear ... that he recognised not only was it a national problem, but that the commonwealth is prepared to play its part."
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