"Can we please get someone here as soon as possible? There's a guy that got knocked and he's ... I think he's having a fit..." comes the panicked call to the emergency services. It was Sam Ford's first night out clubbing after turning 18. As he walked home a drunken stranger viciously attacked him, leaving Sam with a fractured skull. He is now profoundly disabled. "He can't walk or talk. He's deaf in one ear. He has double vision. He can't do anything for himself", his devastated mother explains.

Read the statistics and it's hard to argue with dire warnings like Sam's story. The latest figures show that each year as many as 70,000 people are involved in alcohol-related assaults in Australia. In all, it is estimated that alcohol-related violence costs the community $187 million each year. "One day someone is going to sit down and weigh up the benefit in terms of taxes to the government from the sale of alcohol, against the detriment or the cost to governments of servicing the consequences of violence."

But does the government have the courage to take on the hugely powerful liquor industry, to tackle the real root of this crisis? "Clearly there are close personal relationships between people in government and the industry. They've donated quite large amounts of money to political parties on both sides", says Professor Brian Owler, who is researching the crisis.

This shocking doc captures alarming moments when police themselves are attacked, and follows the paramedics who are forced to clean up the carnage after violence flares. At the hospital emergency ward things are no better. Doctors and nurses try desperately to tend to a constant stream of people who've become victims of alcohol-related violence. A sobering window on a "national pastime that's got well out of hand".

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