The 60 Minutes Australia segment “Brutalised by the effects of alcohol: Fixing Australia’s drinking problem” looks at how Australia’s drinking culture can spill into deadly, routine decisions, especially when young drivers get behind the wheel “blind drunk.” It frames the issue as something experts and law enforcers were already calling an “epidemic” back in 2012, and it argues that jail, fines and decades of scare campaigns have not been enough to stop the road toll and the devastation it leaves behind.

At the centre is the death of 16 year old Ebony Dunworth, killed in a high speed crash after accepting a lift home from a driver with prior DUI convictions who was heavily intoxicated and refused to slow down, even as passengers begged him to stop. Her final moments, including the text message “I’m going to die,” and her parents’ grief, are used to put a human face on what can otherwise look like distant statistics. The program also features a judge describing the harm from alcohol in the courts as “epidemic,” and warning that we have normalised the ugliness of alcohol’s effects by treating it like a national joke.

The broader message is that repeat drink driving is stubborn because the mindset behind it is stubborn, young men overestimate their control, underestimate risk, and alcohol wrecks impulse control and judgment at exactly the wrong moment. The report points to practical ways to break the pattern, clearer education about what people are actually drinking (including what a “standard drink” really is), better mentoring and responsibility around young men’s drinking, and tools like alcohol interlock devices that physically prevent a car from starting if the driver has been drinking. Underneath all of it is one blunt rule the story keeps returning to: separate drinking from driving, every time, with the transport plan decided before the first drink.

Find more from 60 Minutes Australia Facebook page (Australia, January 2026)