QUEENSLAND's emergency departments battled the second-highest level of alcohol-related attendances on Australia Day, a parliamentary committee has heard.
The Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee yesterday held public hearings into the Palaszczuk Government's lockout laws. 
One Brisbane nightclub operator, Trent Meade of Revelry Entertainment, yesterday told the committee that alcohol-fuelled, violent thugs should be treated no differently to terrorists.
He also said there was a problem with "weak and ineffective sentencing". "People who enter our precincts and perpetrate heinous crimes, such as unlawful striking, are the same as terrorists, in my opinion," he said.
"They are now destroying our civil liberties and freedoms and our way of life. They are the scum of the Earth and should be dealt with (and) ostracised in a similar way to terrorists.
"If these draconian laws pass, these people win." Meanwhile, the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine's Queensland faculty chair, Dr David Rosengren, told the committee about the findings of an "alcohol snapshot survey" of 87 per cent of Australian and New Zealand emergency departments on Australia Day.
Health facilities were asked to record alcohol-related attendances at 11pm on   January 26.
Dr Rosengren said Australia's national incidence was 17 per cent, compared to half of that in New Zealand.
"Interestingly ... in Queensland, we had the second-highest incidence of alcohol attendances in our emergency departments in the country at 19 per cent," he said. "Our four largest emergency departments in our major metropolitan areas have an incidence of alcohol at 11pm at night, contributing to more than 30 per cent of their total activity in their departments at that time." Dr Rosengren reiterated that the snapshot was taken at 11pm, "long before the bus turns up with our intoxicated, agitated sort of people".LEAHY'S VIEW P23