Is any single one of Barry O’Farrell’s proposed new laws that are meant to curb alcohol-fueled violence evidence-based? Or is it all based on good old “common sense” knee-jerking?
I’m no fan of booze culture, but it strikes me that most of these measures are going to be more about making people living in expensive newly-gentrified real estate near CBD/KingsX “party zones” happier about less noise etc on their streets than actually about the safety of most of the drinkers.
- Eight-year minimum sentencing for alcohol or drug-fuelled assaults ending in death.
- Serious assault maximum penalty increased by two years, with mandatory minimum sentences.
- On the spot fines for disorderly behaviour increased from $200 to $1100.
- Police have powers to immediately ban ‘troublemakers’ from CBD/Kings Cross.
- Penalty for possession of steroids increased from two to 25 years.
- CBD/Kings Cross venues to have 1:30am lockouts with drinks stopping at 3:00am.
- Bottle shops across NSW to close at 10:00pm.
- ‘Periodic’ risk-based licensing for venues across NSW.
- No new liquor licences for new venues in the CBD/Kings Cross precinct.
- A media campaign to educate the community.
- Increased public transport to move people from Kings Cross at the weekend.
I would expect some of these measures to work for the CBD/KingsX areas, sure. But will they just be shifting the violence elsewhere rather than actually solving the problem?
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
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Categories: culture wars, ethics & philosophy, media, parties and factions, violence
Media Circus: ASIO chief slammed for expert advice edition 
Hoyden About Town 
I wonder what happens when domestic violence increases? Will we see any new laws covering that? I doubt it somehow.
They had good results in Newcastle and the reports from the lockout laws in SA introduced recently seem to be good too. But I agree it can be hard to tell if it just pushes the problem elsewhere. The lockout laws probably need to be state-wide rather than just CBD based but I think its worth trialling.
I’ve been very critical of Barry O’Farrell’s licensing decisions (particularly regarding his reduction in tax rates for and introduction of electronic casino games in clubs, and the whole Barangaroo fiasco) but the evidence suggests that some of these new measures will be helpful.
The venue lockouts and ealier closing, the bottleshop earlier closing and new license moratorium are well supported by the public health literature in terms of reducing harm. There is no evidence to suggest that there will be a substantial “displacement effect” from Kings Cross to another area. The so-called “Newcastle study” specifically looked at this and found no evidence of displacement.
I agree with Mindy that domestic violence has been the elephant in the room in this whole debate. Over half the women physically assaulted in NSW in 2011-12 reported that alcohol was involved. But I’m not aware of any evidence suggesting that these new laws will lead to an increase in domestic assaults (if there is, please point me to it. In fact, given that domestic violence is linked to the availability of alcohol in bottleshops, there could plausibly be a small reduction in domestic violence (although I don’t expect it would be large given the geographic scope of the changes).
On the other hand, mandatory sentencing is almost always a bad thing. And history suggests that increased police powers to ban people from particular areas might disproportionately target groups like Aboriginal people.
But overall, I’m pleasantly surprised by this package of reforms.
Those were the ones that jumped out at me as most potentially problematic, for sure.
I remember now reading some of the early closing and lockouts trials over recent years, and they do seem to have some data behind them, and I don’t see much downside to them really. It’s the other measures that have my eyebrow twitching.
Ed Butler at AusOpinion: A Victory for Populism
As a postscript to the main article, Ed points out that Victoria dropped its lockout trial in Melbourne in 2008 after an upswing in violence. He also wonders why Bangaroo, the site of James Packer’s upcoming new high roller casino, has been excluded from the lockout zone in the CBD?
I don’t have any backups for that comment. I was just wondering if aggressive people going home early from the pub will just take out their aggression on their family more. But it probably won’t be quantifiable.
As an ATSILS lawyer, my immediate thoughts on seeing that summary of proposed changes was (1) Mandatory sentencing never works, (2) people do not think about sentences when committing offences, and (3) $1100 on-the-sport fines for disorderly behaviour and move on notices are likely to be handed out disproportionately to Aboriginal people if NSW is anything like WA.
@Mindy, isn’t that exactly what happened when we experimented with the “six o’clock swill”?
The drunk aggressive people will end up going home at some point. Whether it be 3am or 6am. Would a few more hours of drinking reduce the likelyhood that they would be violent to their family when they get home?
tigtog @ 8 – hopefully they’ll be keeping stats on what happens. The Victorian trial did have a quarter of the venues exempt from the lockout which may have concentrated the drunk people in fewer places. If that’s so it wouldn’t be surprising to see an increase in violence. The SA trial saw a 20% drop in alcohol related violence, though that was only after the first month I think.
I think ideally you’d have the end time of serving of alcohol staggered between venues (after the lockout time so people are forced to go home rather than just re-enter another venue) so you don’t get a bunch of drunk people all leaving at once. But perhaps in practice that’d be too hard to do fairly.
The local news station just pointed out that the towns surrounding the ACT will have their bottlo’s closing at 10pm. So lots more drinkers on the road to the ACT to get more grog. Excellent outcome. Not.
Mindy @ 10 – there’s a very simple way for the ACT to fix that problem – just match the closing times. Then again they might choose to keep the increased revenue from Queanbeyan. I can see some enterprising business setting up just inside the ACT border.
I caught the tail end of Leigh Sales interviewing Barry O’Farrell about this on The 7:30 Report and she actually pointed out that domestic violence was a much bigger problem and leads to far more deaths than ‘one punch’ attacks, so why wasn’t he focussing on that. He waffled about trying to end ‘all’ alcohol fuelled violence in response.
Watched the ABCNews24 interview with the Human Rights Commission President Prof. Gillian Triggs regarding the Human Rights Watch organisation’s report about Australia persistently undercutting refugee protections. She’s talking so much sense, and I’m sadly certain that this government will pay attention to pretty much zero of it.
Actually Chris there was an interesting conversation on Canberra local radio this morning where the DJs were talking about the number of NSW and ACT pubs and clubs that already have their own lock out rules. I think this also applies here as well. Certain pubs close at midnight and others won’t let you in past a certain time even if they close at 3am. I am not a regular pub goer so I don’t know anymore. So for some it will just be a formalising of existing practice which isn’t so bad.
@Chris: The way to do it fairly would be to create a limited number of licenses for each closing time, and have pubs bid for a later closing time license.
Mindy @ 14 – that’s interesting. I’ve never been out late enough in Canberra to hit the lockout rules 🙂 I do think they need to be careful not to end up with a situation where they end up funelling all the increasingly drunk people into a small number of places. That will inevitably end with higher levels of violence.
On Eastside Radio’s Drive program yesterday, NSW Greens MP John Kaye gave a fairly detailed outline of why he thinks the “Newcastle solution” won’t work in Sydney, and thrashed out a few other details. The interview is 28 minutes in, you can listen to the whole segment on replay.
Thoughts from a veteran publican and rock pub owner: Scrap Lockout And Introduce A Licence To Drink, Says Former Annandale Hotel Owner
A lovely article in the Grauniad giving a number of highly specific denials regarding the Australian Parliamentary IT systems.
To wit:
1) There’s not a backdoor into Australian government systems;
2) The NSA doesn’t have “unauthorised entry” to the Australian parliamentary IT operating systems;
3) Electronic communications aren’t being accessed by US intelligence agencies through a back door in the operating system;
4) There is no back door in the Australian parliamentary IT system (“what I tell you three times is true”);
5) MS comply with all jurisdictional laws in relation to these matters;
6) DPS has not been given any specific advice that MS products or any other products have been “backdoored” by foreign intelligence services (four times? This is starting to seem like a case of “doth protest too much”. I mean, three denials was plenty for Peter in the gospels);
7) The network security tools available to the DPS haven’t identified evidence of illicit data collection.
What’s the phrase from “Yes Minister”? “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied”?
I thought there were laws preventing the sale of alcohol to intoxicated persons? A story in The Advertiser last year, I think, said that while the law existed, it was rarely enforced, and only one bartender had been charged with the offense in the previous year. Couldn’t we have a crackdown on that law and see if that’s helpful?
That one is a bit tricky to police without a police officer in every bar imo. I know bartenders who do refuse service if someone is drunk. I have also heard of situations where POC, completely sober, have been refused service on those grounds. I have also heard of bartenders being assaulted by people who were refused service. I am sure there are also bar tenders who ignore the law and owners who insist that people able to pay for drinks be able to purchase them.
I have also heard that some of the offenders were in a roid rage rather than overly drunk too. Shorter me: I am not convinced this new law will work.
Megpie71 – I wouldn’t be surprised if there were indeed no explicit backdoors engineered in to MS products. The NSA and similar agencies are more than capable of finding vulnerabilities themselves in software products. And they would most likely have access to the source code which makes it easier for them to find security issues and at the same time make it much more difficult for others to find and fix them.
Arcadia – the laws around the definition of intoxication seem pretty handwavy so I’m not surprised its rarely prosecuted. Theoretically perhaps you could have an objective measurement (BAC level) but that would be seen as pretty intrusive and in a busy bar doesn’t stop friends buying drinks for friends.
tigtog @ 18 – I think thats the best theoretical solution I’ve read, but in practice I bet there’d literally be riots in the street if a government tried to introduce a licence to buy/drink alcohol. Also depending on how many people lost their licence there’d be a thriving black market.
So, are we part of that terrible “the Greens-Left Activist Complex” the Oz blames for the decline and fall of the ABC?
Also, LOL at claim of Libtika Bourke’s supposed blatant Greens-Left bias.