The Australian Medical Association has backed a broad inquiry into alcohol culture, as calls grow for action on street violence after the death of Sydney teenager Daniel Christie, who was killed in a one-punch attack on New Year's Eve.

Two weeks ago, the Greens announced they would move for a Senate inquiry into the promotion and marketing of alcohol in sport. But health spokesman Richard Di Natale said it was clear the public wanted wider action on alcohol harm.

''Clearly there's an appetite for change,'' he said. ''There's a very public mood for governments to act.

''There's not one thing you can do that's going to improve the situation, it's got to be a number of things. State governments have got a clear role with licensing and those sorts of things, but federally there are levers.''

The party will move for the inquiry when Parliament resumes in February, and Senator Di Natale said he expected to have the opposition's support.

Last week federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion backed away from his earlier suggestion that the federal government would hold its own broad-ranging inquiry into alcohol and violence. Last Wednesday, Senator Scullion said: ''This is not an inquiry that is going to be fenced off by racial grounds, this is about a challenge that faces all Australians.''

The next day he said he had been misquoted, and the government would limit its own bipartisan inquiry to the effects of alcohol on indigenous peoples. But AMA president Dr Steve Hambleton said his members wanted to see discussion on a range of issues around alcohol, including taxation, pricing, labelling and availability.

''The cost to the health system is extraordinary,'' he said. ''Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the doctors patch up the damage from the weekend - broken cheekbones, broken noses, resetting noses, that sort of thing. Facio-maxillary surgeons are very busy. We've seen the coward punch deaths, we've seen permanent brain damage with people caught off guard and ending up permanently disabled … It's clearly not working. It's absolutely not working.''

A recent annual poll by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education found 75 per cent of Australians believe the country has a problem with excess drinking or alcohol abuse, and 74 per cent believe more needs to be done to address related harm.

Senator Di Natale said any meaningful look at alcohol-related harm should look beyond street violence. ''When we talk about alcohol-fuelled violence, it's very tempting to focus on the phenomenon of the coward punch, as it's now being called,'' he said.

''But most alcohol-fuelled violence occurs behind closed doors onto somebody who's being abused by a spouse, usually a woman and that is by far and away the most prevalent dimension to the problem. And I think that's sometimes lost. It's important that the federal government looks at a whole of community response.''

A spokesman for Bill Shorten said the Opposition Leader would not negotiate on other parties' proposals through the media.