Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife | Hacker News Reader

Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife

theguardian.com

176 pointsnness152 comments

Reads like a joke, but is actually the bloody truth. In the last 6 months, ordering my favourite mix drink resulted in either:

- Getting the drink, but had to drink it at the bar were they could "supervise" me! (no joke!)

- Getting the drink, only when ordered seperately and "promise" to not mix it in the same glass

- Get the first one, second one denied

- Direct rejection, because "too late already/wrong day of the week"

- Direct rejection, because "generally illegal"

When I arrived in 2014, Sydney already suffered from a nightlife scene that was nowhere comparable with the ones in any other country I've visited so far. They at least flew in DJs from all over the world to keep people attracted. Now, "In late 2015, they banned parties on boats with more than one DJ."

I refused (read postponed) an offer to go to California last year. Maybe it's time to reconsider.

You could come down to Melbourne, it's got a very healthy nightlife and music scene. It has a little bit of wowserism happening at the moment (no new licenses for bars open past 1am anymore, for example, and some more restrictions on 'music pubs'), but as far as I'm aware, no legislation about timing requirements on mixed drinks (which sounds truly crazy). The main article reads like a horror story for nightlife.

It's a problem in Australian politics in general at the moment - there's a lot of conservative christian politicians in power at the federal level, and at some state levels, and they don't reflect modern australian values. One clear example is around gay marriage, which poll after poll shows the people overwhelmingly want (usually 70-80% support by respondents), but both major parties have too many conservative christians for that argument to fly. Same thing with late-night clubbing, methinks.

Still, it's better than it was 50 years ago when bars had to close at 6pm :)

> ..there's a lot of conservative christian politicians in power at the federal level, and at some state levels, and they don't reflect modern australian values.

How come they don't, if they consistently keep getting elected?

A wild guess: The most influential backers are Christians. They have the money to lend to the party so it can build effective marketing and political campaign to go after the rest of the voters.

Given that the majority of Australians are Christian it would indeed make sense that the most influential backers are Christians too. Probably been like that for a long time?

Still there might be something in their campaigns that resonates with the views of the majority. One wouldn't imagine them consistently winning fair elections in predominantly Hindu or Muslim country, no matter the campaign spending.

The majority of Australians are secular. Take me: I'm from a family that's Church-of-England (C of E). I've been an atheist since at least 10 years old (first strong memory of it), yet the first time I filled out a census form, I ticked C of E because that was my family's religion. These days the religion question on the census form is the only contentious one on it, because of things just like this. Lots of people associate with a given religion but don't really practice it - churches in Australia are fighting falling attendance and graying congregations.

That's very much incorrect. Most Australians are agnostic.

Well according to this: http://www.smh.com.au/national/is-australia-losing-its-relig...

..while non-religious make up a fair portion of Aussies, most still identify as Christians.

If you scroll down a single comment, you'll see one from me pointing out at least one issue with the religion question on the census.

Your own link shows another - the option for 'no religion' has historically been obfuscated or separated. Once upon a time, it didn't even exist. The whole point of your linked article is about how that question can be played with in order to fudge the results.

Money - conservative Christians don't usually cause trouble for corporations.

Age - conservative retirement-age voters are far more likely to vote than the 18-30 demo.

Networking - churches can, and do, bully-pulpit entire parishes.

So policy is far further to the right than the population median.

Voting is compulsory in Australia.

Only if you enrol, which is not compulsory.

Wrong. Enrollment is compulsory.

Is it actively enforced ?

Yes, but not particularly harshly. The Electoral Commission's target is 95% of eligible voters enrolled, and it's currently at 93.5%. You are supposed to enrol at some time between your 18th birthday and the next election (which roll around every 3 years or so), so some of that non-enrolled percentage are folks who will do so shortly. A small amount of people are eligible to vote, but not capable, such as people with severe intellectual handicaps. In practice, most folks are enrolled.

The penalty isn't particularly harsh ($20 first time missed a vote, $50 afterwards). I have a 40-year-old friend that's not enrolled, and as far as I'm aware, she has never been fined for it.

Yup.

Money - conservative Christians don't usually cause trouble for corporations.

That's not been my experience.

Age - conservative retirement-age voters are far more likely to vote than the 18-30 demo.

Australia has mandatory voting. We have something like 98% voter turn out. You don't know what you are talking about.

Networking - churches can, and do, bully-pulpit entire parishes.

Facts not in evidence.

Australian christians don't really advertise the fact. You won't see an Australian politician saying "God Bless 'X'" at the end of a speech (as appears to be the usual case with US politicians) unless they're speaking to an overtly christian audience. It's fine to be christian in Australia, but proselytising is very frowned upon, and christians who often publicly state their faith are generally seen as 'wowsers' (fun-killers).

Also, MPs are generally voted in by party affiliation, so people vote more for the party rather than the individual person. Anyway, I'm not sure how it's happened, but the power-brokers of both major parties have a greater proportion of staunch christians than the wider population. So, when a party wants to do X or Y, often a bone will need to be tossed to one of these power-brokers to get the numbers.

Highly motivated ethnic or religious people are bloc voters who turn out and can wield a disproportionate influence.

It's not really a Christian thing, it's any bloc. I don't know much about Australian politics, but I can think of several political machines in the past driven by Irish Catholic turnout, and a few current ones driven by ultra-conservative Christian and Jewish groups.

Actually its more people of the far left who are trying to do away with alcohol.

First they went after smoking, with that nonsense about plain packaging. I fail to see that if something is legal, why a company shouldn't have the right to brand and market that product appropriately.

Now they are looking doing away with alcohol. Just you wait. In 10-15 years they will be calling for prohibition due to all the 'damage' caused by alcohol.

> First they went after smoking, with that nonsense about plain packaging.

Plain packaging is nowhere near the first against smoking; it's more like the start of the end-game for it. The government has been very open about wanting to get rid of smoking altogether, and has been so for decades. I was at high school in the late '80s and remember a bloke from Quit saying that they were funded by cigarette taxes, and his job was to put himself out of a job. Punitive taxes and advertising bans long predate plain packaging, as do bans on smoking in hospitality venues.

Alcohol isn't going to go away any time soon for exactly the same reason negative gearing isn't - too many pollies like it for themselves. Alcohol is also a major industry in Australia, unlike tobacco. Similarly, mainstream Australia identifies strongly with a tipple - for example, we like to boast that one of our PMs held a world record for skulling beer. I've never heard any such patriotic murmurings on the topic of tobacco.

Yes, and that end game has been ratcheting up for 40 years.

At one stage practically everyone smoked. Now, so few smoke.

Its not like they are going to rock up tomorrow and ban alcohol. They are going to do it like boiling a frog. So slowly that it becomes fait accompli.

After all it was King O'Malley who banned alcohol from Canberra during its construction. He also is why its spelled Labor.

What is your favorite drink? I live in Sydney too (Bondi), and agree the new rules are ridiculous, but what's this about 'not mix it in the same glass'?

Jägermeister+RedBull ... Don't judge me ;)

Have you considered the UK, where on occasions one can easily feel like the only one in the pub not drinking Jägerbombs, and drinking to massive excess generally is a proud national pastime.

If you don't start drinking at 5pm on a Friday, puke up twice, consume your body weight in kebab meat and then go for a greasy fry-up in the morning, you're basically a boring sod.

For the benefit of foreigners, i will note that this is actually optional for most people. My experience, living in London and working at a few different tech companies, is that you might go out for a "quick beer after work" one to three times a week (and almost never on fridays), stay out for one to three hours (you're rarely still there for closing time), and over the course of the evening, drink two to four pints of pretty nice beer (you can usually find either a craft beer place or a normal pub with a good selection).

You will probably get some food at the pub, maybe only some bowls of chips to share, or maybe something a bit more substantial. If you do make a habit of getting a kebab, you will eventually manage to find the one place in your territory that is actually pretty good (Best Mangal for the Old Street posse, Damascu Bite for the Spitalfields massive, etc).

In my case, i'll also go out for cocktails a couple of times a month, but that's a similar experience - the cocktails i like are so bitter and so expensive that you drink pretty slowly!

> drink two to four pints of pretty nice beer

This is optional too.

That sounds stupid to be honest. To each his own I guess?

Yes, drinking culture in the UK is stupid and everyone knows it's a problem. The cost to the health service means that it's not really something that should be tolerated in the long term.

See for example: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/10/alcohol...

If a national health service is an excuse to tell people how to live, I've pretty happy Obama fucked it all up here and just institutionalized health insurers.

The people drinking themselves to shit aren't honorably refusing healthcare for their self inflicted injuries

How about the people who engage in that big killer - sedentary lifestyles? If you want to sit in front of a computer all, day, why should everyone else pay for your lifestyle choice? /s

Well, then make them pay for themselves then insead of limiting the range of activities they are allowed to do.

Obama and his advisor Cass Sunstein are ostensibly pursuing "libertarian paternalism", as is Cameron in the UK. I'm guessing you like the sound of "libertarian".

Alcohol consumption is one clear case of people harming themselves. There are a lot of other areas in which the government in fact doesn't know what's best, so I don't think you can generalize about liberties either way.

Seems like you're using libertarian as a marketing buzzword that has no meaning

It's not me, it's Thaler and Sunstein.

I'm left libertarian myself and I'd like to drink less alcohol, personally.

No it's not !!! I don't drink much! Because I don't drink during the week. I start drinking really late on Fridays (about 7pm) and finish early (about 3am), and only repeat that again Saturday nights, so really 5 whole days without alcohol is like really good. Kebab is meat and meat is healthy. Anyway what would we do if not drink?

(Much /s)

As a Sydneysider I prefer to write a couple of hundred lines of code and play a couple of hours of Dota 2 with my best mate on a Friday night.

Actually, in the UK, it is illegal to serve pre-mixed caffeine and alcohol, but it's rarely enforced. This is why many bars will pour the shot in a highball, and hand you a can of red bull, so what you then do is your responsibility, not theirs.

How odd. I've never had the urge to drink Red Bull or Jagermeister, separately or together. But Irish Coffee has been around for ages. The people I would see drinking it always seemed to manage to walk out of the bar under their own power,

Are you sure? I can't find anything online that supports that. Many bars serve other drinks (vodka and orange, gin and tonic, etc) unmixed, so you can mix it to taste.

Buckfast is still sold, and that contains caffeine. Kahlúa too.

Ah, think you're right - this might just be Scotland where it's actually the law, but was certainly the common practice when I was working bars up north.

There were discussions here about legislating against alcoholic drinks with caffeine levels above a certain level but I don't think anything actually became law:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10164507

I suspect you are right that this is only the law in Scotland. At a fairly respectable bar in Cambridge, I've set up 20-drink long "Jagertrains" [1] with the Bar Manager on more than one occasion, and he never mentioned that it was illegal to do so.

[1] https://cdn.makeagif.com/media/3-07-2012/ZdwGP4.gif

Maybe the bar staff are just trying to save you from yourself ;)

Redbull and its siblings do contain a lot of caffeine which allows people to get drunker and still be physically active. One of my colleagues was convinced that all the caffeine drunk with alcohol these days is the cause of the rise in drunken violence.

"Jägerbombs"

Oh dude, I can't believe the forbade Jägerbombs. I thought you were going to say Everclear plus genuine Absynthe...

This is nonsense they trialled first in Newcastle. Prohibiting the sale of a double shot of spirits in one glass; eventually forbidding the sale of any neat spirits at all.

Want a nip of expensive scotch? Hope it's still good drowned in soft drink.

Oh God. I travelled to Newcastle to meet friends and went out on the town on a Friday night. My big mistake was waiting until 10:30pm to depart, because nearly everything was closed or getting ready to close at midnight - Newcastle's "favourite cocktail bar" was unable to make any cocktails.

I'm from Christchurch, and we have a better nightlife than Newcastle, and our CBD got smooshed by an earthquake.

Haha, Christchurch nightlife. It's so bad that I'm a uni student there and go to town maybe twice a year.

There's about 4 places to go, they're all ages away from each other, and the lines are always really long.

The council is also doing its best to kill the nightlife, strongly preferring craft beer pubs over clubs, and trying to bring in a 1 am one way door, 3 am closing policy.

Apparently the bloke in charge of liquor licences at the council is teetotal too.

Your chances of being assaulted in Newcastle before the lockout laws were very high. I doubt you would be having much fun in the Emergency Department, getting stitched up.

I have no info on what effect the licensing changes had, but I can vouch that Newcastle could be genuinely scary on a Saturday night. You haven't lived until you've hidden under a table while pint glass missiles hurtle overhead around a revolving dance floor on a boat on the Tyne.

I think that's the other Newcastle. This one is north of Sydney (I guess they are both north of Sydney, but there's a bit of a hike to the one on the Tyne...)

Hah - right, yes, I'm talking about the one in England, which apparently has quite a bit in common with its antipodean counterpart.

Well... it used to be that way :-)

Of course the heavy handedness of the Star Hotel has been long forgotten; now of course they boil the frog slower, so instead of riots we now have malaise and the brain drain.

In the end there will still be loss, but this time it won't be accompanied regeneration. In time Sydney will become a financial / service sector equivalent of Port Kembla unless the ship is turned around.

Other countries, who drink more than us Aussies do and have zero lockout laws don't have the problems we apparently do with violence.

Which countries are you referring to?

In the US, Utah is very similar. Some places will sell you a "sidecar" shot with a mixed drink, but a lot won't. Hard alcohol is measured electronically to ensure it is exactly one ounce.

And to the article authors point, that is because of religious reasons - in this case the Mormons.

this sounds like salt lake city

I'm an outsider to Sydney and Australia, and I'm a regular visitor.

This article rings of an insider perspective, full of "we" statements. It has a vibe of personal anger and personal overreaction.

What I'm genuinely curious about is the events that lead to the formation of these laws. Again, as an outsider, the main thing to do in Sydney is drink. A lot. The main thing my friends want to do after work in Sydney is drink. This isn't out of line for a city, and there's nothing inherently bad about drinking. Sydney's youth just seems to be focused on it more than other cities I've visited.

These laws were likely passed as reactionary safeguards. What are they reacting against? This article only comments on the laws mockingly and with satire, including linking to random blogs as sources. Can anyone comment on possible events that lead to these laws? My only opinion is that Sydney enjoys drinking more than the average city, and I'm curious if these "lockout" laws are an overreaction, or justified in some way.

Innocent people kept getting murdered on King St (a popular bar and night life destination, as well as prostitution or at least erotic joints, and possibly some drug use.)

A few years back there was a spate of "King Hits" which is when one person hits another person in the head and immediately knocks them unconscious, usually through random chance rather than any kind of skill, but meaning that person then bears the full force as their head hits the concrete and likely dies in the process.

There were a whole bunch of unprovoked attacks on that street one after the other on completely random innocent people at night time. It was a national disgrace, one minute you're just Joe Blow walking with your fiancee down the street and the next you're dead. This didn't happen just once, but week after week after week and a bunch of people were dead, and the newspapers were eating it up.

So the government put these laws in place to stop it, and to be fair it seems to have worked as I haven't seen anyone talk about dying on that street in the news lately. Overall though I have split feelings.

On the one hand we need to get together as a society and start putting an end to people who are overly aggressive and posing a risk to the rest of us. Sorry but that's the damned truth. If you're invading homes or punching absolutely random people in the street then you're just not going to fit in with the rest of us and it's time to go. It's us or them and I don't want to be a statistic.

On the other hand it's a shame that as we're all too shy to implement that kind of thing, we get laws that put innocent people in the crossfire and suck the joy out of life for the rest of us. But at least you get to feel comfortable having all those dangerous people still on the street simmering away waiting to have one drink too many and kill others... yay for liberty.

For those who don't know Sydney: Kings Cross is a 400m street packed with clubs. It does look shady with its erotic clubs, but short enough that you're out in a few minutes. Newspapers have a focus over night crime in Kings Cross, I've always wondered there was a political agenda or whether that was statistically abnormal. Alternatives are downtown (less dense in clubs), Oxford St (gay clubs) and farther neighbourhoods for more hipster people.

As a French citizen having lived over there 3 years, I was indeed impressed that in Australia alcohol = violence, which is a new concept to me. You often see people down on the pavement cuffed by the police for a few hours until they calm down. I have no idea whether they get fined or arrested after that. My NYC friend says police is still very reasonable, and not as overeager and totalitarian as in NYC, though. So subjects might actually actually drunk and violent.

They are. The lockout laws actually come from Newcastle, which had an even worse problem. Alcohol fueled violence has been and remains a massive problem in Australia. In fact, drinking in Australia remains a massive problem: we have some of the worst cases of binge-drinking and alcoholism rates in the world.

We have a list of dangerous pubs in NSW:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-27/north-coast-pub-tops-l...

This is a bit over the top, completely playing into the media hysteria. A few people got killed because some drunken, uneducated cowards hit them. This wasn't night after night.

I'm also amused at the fact that the premier and all his buddies are devout christians, don't get me wrong,I have no issue with religion or the liberals, I'm long time lib voter, but I'm going to reconsider my vote in the future now though based on this new knowledge I have.

What this really reeks of is corruption. The two big casino's in town (the star, and the one at barrangaroo which hasn't been built yet) are allowed to stay open 24/7, I'm 99% sure there is some preferential treatment going on, money talks, bullsh*t walks.

`'One-punch'' assaults have cost 90 Australian lives since 2000, most in booze-fuelled bashings, a study has found.` ... `NSW had the highest number of king-hits (28), followed by Victoria and Queensland (24 cases each).`

So not night after night at all, but more than a couple (this article is from 2013.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/90-killed-in-singlepunch-assa...

That's one-punch deaths, but not one-punch assaults. There's even more of those. Tucked away further in the article is a quote that says it is an occurrence every club night:

"St Vincent Hospital's emergency department director, Gordian Fulde, treats four or five ''absolutely obvious'' king-hits while working at the hospital every Friday or Saturday night."

Instead of destroying small business and bringing in laws which detrimentally affect everyone, the state government should create examples of the offenders (the idiots that thing its cool to knock someone out), throw the book at them. strengthen the laws in a way that limits the potential for misuse, but sends a strong message to the drunken yobs, "if you do this, you're toast".

These lockout laws don't fix anything, they just move the problem elsewhere, Newtown and Enmore residents are seeing more and more violence at nights now. It's an example of shifty moral knee-jerk-reaction law making, 'lets pass these heavy handed laws that give us more power, but lets frame it in a way that if you oppose it, you can be painted as supporting murders on the streets'.

I completely agree with the author that NSW becoming more and more of a nanny state, i.e: not allowed to have a BBQ (which god forbid, might make a bit of smoke) if you are in a strata property, or that un-named council that has banned kites (probably because a kite could take down a plane), I know restaurant owners who follow the rules and are still terrorized by the prospect of the office of gaming and liquor deciding to shut them down.

Hopefully with Malcolm leading the federal libs now, he will exert some pressure on the NSW libs to wake up and stop sabotaging the NSW economy. Australian politics (and politics in general) are just pathetically depressing.

They did strengthen the laws. There's some pretty strong mandatory minimums in place now for a wide array of late night violence offences.

The media did. There's not much point in making an example out of drunk people, because violent drunk people aren't thinking of the consequences.

The only way of making this work would be a register of offenders who can't go to pubs because of their drunkenness. Given that we tried to have mandatory pre-commitment for gamblers (which allowed them to gamble, but put limits on it) and this utterly failed, I'm not surprised that the government realised that lockout laws were the only way forward.

Incidentally, do you have any facts to back up that lockout laws are "sabotaging" the NSW economy?

As for not BBQ'ing in a Strata property - that's ill-informed. There are currently a set of amendments that hopefully will be enacted by July 2016 that prevent people's smoke from drifting into adjoining properties. The amendments allow a ban order to be made if the tenant makes a nuisance or hazard through their actions. If the tenant doesn't comply, then they get taken to the tribunal, who can then fine them a lot of money.

Don't see what the issue is here. If your cigarette or BBQ smoke is interfering with another tenant, then you should be prevented from doing this.

P.S. Malcolm Turnbull knows better than to interfere with State matters, given he's a Federal politician.

> Incidentally, do you have any facts to back up that lockout laws are "sabotaging" the NSW economy?

Not the economy, but they're killing the nightlife and live music sector. You may not care about that, but I do.

That was killed by poker machines.

Though I'm not sure why you actually need to serve alcohol to enjoy live music. As for killing the nightlife sector, if the nightlife sector relies on people drinking copious quantities of alcohol, then it might not be a bad thing. Maybe they should evolve to be less dependent on alcohol.

I would argue that you need to sell alcohol to make the live music profitable.

In that case it's an unviable business model.

My issue is that we even need laws to deal with this, people can have horrible neighbours (you must remember the fence wars saga), what's to stop your horrible neighbour from making your life painful because you grill up some food once in a while.

Please, cry me a river. Of course you need laws to deal with obnoxious people who live in close proximity to you. There are wars over fences, but the law handles that pretty well now.

The thing stopping your horrible neighbour from making your life painful is that they must have evidence of your wrongdoing. If you "grill up some food once in a while" and smoke from your grill goes into their property, then what's to stop them from deliberately doing the same to you?

So you're looking at about 4 deaths a year. To put that in context, in 2012[1] 26 Australians died from falling off a chair and 58 died falling while getting out of bed. The gold standard for these kind of comparisons, lightning strikes, gets 5-10 Australians a year[2].

There is a problem with drinking and violence in Australia, but at the same time, 90 people over 13 years isn't all that many; by itself, it shouldn't be used to argue for new laws.

[1] http://www.news.com.au/national/the-weird-ways-australians-d...

[2] https://www.australiawidefirstaid.com.au/lightning-strikes/

Wow, talk about taking the data and misusing it!

There were zero deaths in Kings Cross from falling off a chair, and zero deaths whilst getting out of bed. Similarly, nobody was struck by lightning in Kings Cross either.

In 2012, there were about 20 deaths per 100,000 people attributable to alcohol in NSW. Source is here:

http://www.healthstats.nsw.gov.au/Indicator/beh_alcafdth

What the fuck are you talking about? The 90 deaths mentioned by the parent are Australia-wide, not merely bound to King's Cross. It's entirely appropriate to compare them to other Australia-wide measures. Unless Victoria and Queensland, mentioned in the parent's article, are now located in King's Cross, I guess. Or hey, I can reframe it your way if you like: There were zero deaths from alcohol-fueled king hits whilst getting out of bed.

Also, talking about misusing data, you're claiming that 20 deaths per 100k "attributable to alcohol" is due to violent assault. What a load of shit - the Australian homicide rate (from all sources) is only 1.1/100k. "Attributable to alcohol" basically means diseases - there aren't 4400 (22M/your rate) deaths across the country every year from violent assault, alcohol-related or otherwise. There's not even a tenth that number. Alcohol-deaths-by-violence are a rounding error compared to alcohol-deaths-by-disease.

Look at your own linked graphs sorted by age - do you honestly believe that 65-year-olds are dying from king hits at a rate five times greater than 20-year-olds? That 85-year-olds dying from such violence at nearly twice the rate as those 65-year-olds? Those are some pretty feisty nursing homes.

No fool, I'm not. I wasn't aware that the god of lightning was throwing down bolts from the sky to murder innocent civilians. And those dastardly killers committing murder by making people fall out of bed, someone should set up a taskforce, stat! It's diabolical.

Here's a small hint: those laws weren't just introduced due to homicides, but also for assaults.

I was putting the number of deaths into context, not the cause of it. Laws are sledgehammers, not scalpels, and keeping things in context is important. Cyclists die every year from being car-doored, yet we don't seem to be so passionate about fixing that, nor inconveniencing the whole demographic of car drivers because of a few idiots.

As for your last sentence, if you re-read what I said, you'll see "by itself". It was put there there along with "Australia has a problem with drinking and violence" to suggest that you need to argue with more than just what is actually a very few deaths. It's like you wilfully misread me.

As for "no you're not", do you mean you're not claiming that 20/100k are deaths from alcoholic assault? I can't see something else I said you were doing. Then why the hell did you bring it up? Who was talking about long-term effects of alcohol on health?

I probably shouldn't have called you a fool. You seem quite angry!

U.S. liquor laws are weird and vary state by state. In my state bars require an expensive license to sell booze. Bars associated with crimes, DUI, assault and battery, manslaughter get fined and ultimately the license is revoked. When a license is revoked, alcohol can no longer be served at that location, ever. Servers themselves face hefty fines when they're found to be serving someone who's drunk. Get a DUI, your waitress can be in trouble.

This approach puts a lot of pressure on the seller. On the other hand, it gives the sellers a lot of leeway in deciding when enough is enough. Do people get overserved? yup. But "bad bars" tend to self destruct.

Getting a liquor license in France is no picnic either. On top of that you have Kafka-esque regulations on the actual running of the business. Countries, especially socialist ones seem to not understand the value of entrepreneurship and its discouraged at every stage.

In the US (where I have a bit of experience opening bars and restaurants,) the regulations can be somewhat intense in terms of health, building codes and alcohol licensing, but the process is typically standardized and generally fair. In France, much of your success depends on if the local mayor is on your side or not. I am leaving NYC out of my generalization because, from what I've heard, the A,B,C inspections can be highly corrupt: paying off someone to increase your rating; failing an inspection for seemingly innocuous stuff (a cracked floor tile in the kitchen, for example is considered a 'violation.')

The market liquidity in hospitality is rather low because of huge barriers to entry. To me the concept of an alcohol license is rather Byzantine.

This is truly horrible, but I have to say that I'd rather have the government use proportionate force on bad players instead of using it on business owners to have them enforce some reactionary laws and in the process limiting the freedoms of the majority.

The state has the monopoly on enforcing rules and it should not fear forcing citizens to comply.

If the state for some reason cannot uphold order anymore then we are back at having survival of the fittest and might makes right on the streets.

I'm not defending trigger happy police men, but in this particular case police should have been watching this area and arrest and later charge everyone that hit somebody random in the head for attempted manslaughter, even if the victim didn't suffer any enduring damage.

I believe this would have sent a message.

It was in King's Cross, not King St.

And I believe the number of people who died is two.

That's Kings Cross, and the figures were quick high for assaults. Kings Cross isn't even a gazetted area.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/16/assaults-in-k...

The sheer number of assaults being treated at St Vincent's Hospital caused the head of the emergency department to describe it as a warzone. Someone of that stature doesn't say this sort of thing lightly!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-26/professor-gordian-fuld...

Possibly thinking of King St in Melbourne which has a number of adult theatres

It's a shame they don't have laws against murder or assault that could address these issues.

So there is a problem with assaults/murders on a street. Why not put cameras there to capture attacker's clearly, create super-harsh punishment for unprovoked attacking, put a policeman on every corner, etc?

How imposing laws against mixing alcohol in a shaker can is possibly related?

Important correction: you mean Kings Cross, not King st.

It seems to have worked in the sense that not being out at night is a good way to not get punched while out at night. It's basically the most invasive form of keeping safe and one people could easily have implemented all on their own.

When I first immigrated to Australia I was shocked at the tone that journalists used, even in mainstream publications. Turns out it's just an Aussie thing. People can argue about the merits of that tone but that article fits pretty well with Aussie journal style, especially for an editorial.

If you think that's bad, don't listen to what passes for debate in the House of Representatives! Although it's calmed down since Keating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEsN4-XLE2k

I lived there at the time the lockout was introduced.

There was a small number of alcohol-fuelled fights that resulted in the deaths of some young men by head trauma (punched or falling). They were very prominent. I'm not sure if there was really increasing trend in violence, but perception in the media was that of a crisis (as they do). The government reacted with little planning (as they do).

For example, the "one punch" law was introduced to discourage people from punching others in the head. It seems ridiculous we needed a specific law for that [1].

The people that like a drink to socialise but aren't inclined to punch others go to new venues outside the lockout zone now. That brings another set of implications.

[1] http://www.nsw.gov.au/onepunch

From your link, the law may be nicknamed 'one punch', but the details aren't actually specific to a single punch - instead they are simply more severe a penalty if the person dies as a result of the assault, with a bizarre minimum if the offender was intoxicated (apparently if you think clearly about it beforehand, you're not as bad...)

Over the past few years, there have been a number of deaths caused by unprovoked one-punch attacks ("king-hits", or now "coward punches"), possibly the highest profile being the death of Daniel Christie[0] after being attacked in Kings Cross, a hotspot for nightlife.

In the wake of these attacks, a number of new regulations and laws have been passed, with the stated aim of reducing alcohol-related violence. These regulations had been tested previously in Newcastle, the aforementioned deaths being an opportunity to pass them swiftly in Sydney.

Despite the supposed good intentions, there are a number of things that people question about the new laws, such as that the new regime is overcomplicated and often just silly (see anecdotes in this thread), or the rather suspect exemption of the local casinos from the laws, despite suffering the same problems[1].

Additionally, some people would argue that the response has been disproportionate to the actual problem - this infographic[2] from a violence support group[3] claims that there were only 20 deaths attributable to this kind of attack between 2007 and 2012.

Personally, I'm somewhat of a homebody and haven't been directly affected by the changes in the law, but I do consider them an overreaction and lament the effect they've had on Sydney's nightlife in general.

Having read the article in it's original location[4], where the author provides more figures to support their allegations, I was left feeling rather bitter about the whole situation, though I do agree that it was written extremely emotively and was intended to elicit that response.

On behalf of the other side, though, I would offer this[5] video clip - it's from this week, showing the Senior Australian of the Year Gordian Fulde responding to a question about the lockout laws, for which he was a strong advocate.

[0]: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/daniel-christie-dies-following-kin...

[1]: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/star-casino-may-be-the-most-violen...

[2]: http://opck.qhvsg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2014/09...

[3]: http://opck.qhvsg.org.au/

[4]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney-plea...

[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDwoqkmZULI&t=40m55s

> showing the Senior Australian of the Year Gordian Fulde responding to a question about the lockout laws, for which he was a strong advocate.

I have no idea who the guy is, he might be great in other respects, but his answer to the question he was asked was absolute bollocks. "Of course you can still have a drink at 2AM, go home with your friends and open a bottle of champagne", I mean, what kind of shitty answer is that? Does this guy really believe that's what young people should do? Sit at home and thanking God that nothing bad happens?

I've never been to Australia but this video has really infuriated me, because in 2-3 years' time these sort of people's shitty rationalizations will certainly make their way half of the world to my Eastern European country as reasons to "make young people behave". "If the civilized Australians are doing it, why shouldn't we?", that's what local politicians would say (you can replace the Australians with the British, Swedish or the Germans, there's always more civilized people than us who have answers to all the life's problems).

He's the guy who makes sure that you don't die when you get assaulted in Kings Cross. He runs the Emergency Department at St Vincent's Hospital, which is right across from that area.

HTH.

Is it telling that there's an actual name for a specific type of assault popularized by drunken people in Australia? It's almost as if this idea has become part of the culture. I'm not aware of any other types of assaults that have become so mainstream that they're given their own name (which doesn't mean they don't exist). Is it actually a part of the culture, meaning these laws are justified? I could also see the danger of naming something, when someone is drunk it just comes into their head as an action to do (which would also justify the laws).

SOHO has closed! Didn't know. Last time I was there years ago, the whole club was high on MDMA. Personal space dissolves into nothing, your dancing becomes super smooth, your inner-calm is completely zen. Nobody is drunk. Nobody fighting. Nobody dosing off. People are fresh and energized until sunrise. Walking out into the sunrise is a good feeling.

The drunken trashy streets are just places to avoid and navigate your way to other places or home.

It's a sad irony that MDMA would actually stop the violence. It's simply not possible to descend into violent tendencies when your mind is expanded, as opposed to clouded by alcohol.

"Sir, you've had enough to drink. Can I offer you an MDMA drink instead".. would cause tumble-weeds to blow through the emergency department hallways.

As fun as MDMA is, it's horribly and cumulatively neurotoxic. Mass weekly usage would be a short term gain at the expense of a lot of long term health issues.

MDMA and alcohol intoxication don't seem to be best friends either IIRC.

Half the UK was on E for most of the '80s and '90s. The only sign of an epidemic of brain damage is that people have started buying Craig David records again.

Yeah, true, I wouldn't recommend MDMA when drunk.

But after a couple of beers, fine though. Or even after a shot of tequila and a beer chaser, and maybe even another shot and another beer, even then some E would go down nicely!

But I was referring more to a possible world where if drugs other than alcohol were legal, we'd see less blind drunk people causing problems. Can't wait for the stats to come out of USA for how pot legalization influences alcohol related crime and health issues. I suppose we'll need more time for those stats to come in.

I have just returned to Sydney after 5 years in SF. I grew up and worked in the neighborhoods most affected by the lockout-laws, so have experienced the before and after. I've seen the parties, I've seen the punch-ups, I've seen the drug overdoses and the drag queens. The city I remembered had a vibrant culture and a heady mixture of people that comes with any cosmopolitain city around the world. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun.

Coming back, I have found the mood here to be stifling, and am astonished by how dead the city/inner-east has become - it's a total ghost-town after hours. I complained from afar when I heard Hugo's had shut down (I remember when Sneaky Sound System got their start there), and I always thought certain RSA laws were over the top when I was a bartender myself, but things have gone beyond a joke. These laws are sucking the life out of Sydney.

The problem here is one of culture. While our Prime Minister sets about promoting an "Innovation Nation", the foundations for attracting talent are further reaching than any capital gains tax reform or optimistic prose can provide. If Australia is to have a vibrant tech sector, we need to recognize that top talent comes from the fringe - as do entrepreneurs, empirically. Regulation may drive a good media headline ("Government is doing something!") but in this law of unintended consequences, it will only hasten the funnel of free-thinkers leaving our shores.

I feel I should point out FWIW this is a state law and Melbourne is still fun

While it might be better than Sydney, SF is not a good place for nightlife though. Coming from Tokyo where the standard nightlife routine is arrive at your clubbing area of choice around 12:30am (near last train) because you're stuck there until first train (~5am). So, pretty much all clubs and bars as well as many late night restaurants are open until 5am or later. When I came back to California I hated that my nightlife was basically forced to end at around 1:30am (LA or SF). Many other cities party all night.

This is the first time I've heard of this, but as I understand the new laws are:

- No sales after 10pm for off-site consumption

- No entrance after 1:30am

- No alcohol sales in venues after 3am

In the UK this has effectively been the law for a long time. The actual law allows 24hr licensing (for on-site consumption), but very few places have a license to sell alcohol after 1am.

Why exactly have these laws so drastically caused problems in Sydney?

As the article says, Sydney culture is different due to the previous laws. People didn't used to go to bars until late, 10:30 or 11:30. That means you have to either stay at one bar after 1:30 or just go home. Previously people bar hopped into the early morning.

Perhaps there were other factors.

I'm not sure that this is the only cause here. People kept dying in Sydney because of late night attacks. If that's not a disincentive to going out, I don't know what is.

I don't agree with the lockout laws though, or the majority of alcohol-limiting laws in Australia (I live in Melbourne). They just smell of moralising.

It's also now illegal to sell kebabs past midnight:

http://stoneyroads.com/2016/01/there-is-now-a-lockout-law-fo...

Native Sydney-sider, lived there for 25 years, not sure I'd enjoy living there any more.

Vancouver, Canada when bars were forced to shut down at 2am, resulted in thousands of drunks pouring into the streets all at once and mass brawling with each other. Laws were changed to allow 4am last call and legal after hours, and the gigantic street brawls disappeared. A barwatch association was started to keep out chronic violent offenders and known gangsters from clubs and bars too which helped.

There's also juiced up goofs here running around one punching random people while their friends film their crime and yell "worldstar" (worldstar hiphop) which is the site where all the recent knockout game idiocy originated.

Sounds like Norway. I'm not much into drinks but there is a long-running joke (?) here that you cannot pour spirit into wine (spurit up/strengthening the wine), but you can very well pour wine into spirit (watering out the spirit). I think it goes back to the 70ties.

I'm personally from Stockholm but were in Sydney about a year ago and yeah I must say that your alcohol laws are pretty insane. After 12 you can't order this and after 1 you cant order that and so on. So silly that I couldn't buy drinks for my friends and that they had to go to the bar themselves to order it. Do they really believe that I would order 4 drinks for myself at each order?

I was following the article for a while until it shifted and started blaming the politicians' religion as the driving force in the changes to the law. It sounds like the authors have an axe to grind.

For instance, they use this quote as an example of the Police Commissioner being a teetotaler against drinking and justifying it according to religion:

“In another foray into the state’s social and moral landscape, Mr Scipione says the rise in binge drinking among girls and young women is making them vulnerable to sexual assault, liaisons they may regret, psychological trauma, sexually transmitted infections and even a threat to their fertility.”

The Sun-Morning Herald article they link to [1] reports the police commissioner pointing the journalists to a 2011 study coming out discussing the impacts of binge drinking on young females and the PC is reiterating the conclusions of the study and asking people to be aware of the risks of their behavior and take commonsense measures to ward off potential negative outcomes. I'm missing the part where he's a frothing totalitarian religious zealot out to impose a strict religious interpretation on the population.

It's one thing to write a policy critique, which, I think the article mostly gets right and points out the impacts the laws are having on local entertainment and the impacts that has on other industries notorious for attracting and keeping you people, like technology. It's another thing to divest into an axe grinding tangent that ascribes malicious intent to politicians for religious reasons while providing spurious reasoning and support in the article. It's disingenuous to mix in personal opinion and interpretation of actions as verifiable fact without having links that show because A therefore B.

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/girls-drink-pact-20111...

Sydney has never really had a good night life.

I wonder what has changed over the years to make people (both men and women) so much more aggressive when they get drunk. My personal observation is young men are much more muscular than my generation were − maybe all this violence is being driven by testosterone and/or droids.

It has always been this violent. However, community attitudes have changed, we no longer accept that alcohol-fueled violence is acceptable. It used to be, and isn't any more.

It used to be acceptable in Sydney to drive home drunk. If you admitted you drove home drunk now, you'd be rightly pilloried.

I agree there has always been an amount of violence. In the past 15-20 years, at least in my opinion, there has been an escalation in the severity of the violence.

As a 20 year old, going out to a pub or club, there was always the risk of getting involved in a fight. At the time that probably would have meant a few punches, probably to the body and a lot of pushing and shoving. We mostly drank beer and maybe some spirits later in the evening (Bourbon and Coke/Scotch and Dry etc). Only fit people and body builders went to the gym.

By my 30's glassing had become a thing in Australia, and quite often women were the perpetrators. So many the pubs and clubs switched to plastic jugs and "glasses". There were a lot more alco-pops (premixed soft drink with vodka) being consumed. More people were going to a gym and boxercise/body combat classes were becoming popular.

Sometime during my 30's Redbull and Vodka (or some other spirit) was the drink of choice for the 20-something set. A lot of people started going to the gym, with the guys training for bulk.

The two trends of increasing consumption of spirits in sugary and caffeinated mixers plus boxing training and bulking up a the gym, to me seem to be underlying causes of the increased severity of the violence.

Drinking beer most of the night makes you slower and sleepier. Drinking sugary soft drinks instead makes you more energetic and less sleepy. Drinking Redbull and other energy drinks means you are now wide awake, twitchy and drunk at the same time.

Combine that with some boxing training/muscle building and the stupid fights over spilled drinks/girls etc will get ugly.

I would prefer to see alco-pops and Redbull as a mixer banned from licensed premises.

Of course, beyond this is the huge problem with Ice/Methamphetamine use in Australia. The mining boom was something of a driver of this as ice is one of the only drugs that will clear your system fast so you won't test positive if you get randomly screened at work.

> sugary

Sugar and alcohol is a mixture that has always been popular. A lot of traditional methods for making wine, mead, and beer favored residual sugar. For example, harvesting grapes as late as possible or leaving them to dry in the sun so the sugar was concentrated was a common winemaking technique in ancient times.

> energy drinks

A cup of strong coffee contains much more caffeine than most "energy drinks", and a lot of people add sugar to their coffee. Caffeine+sugar+EtOH isn't a new thing either - before Jagerbombs and "alco-pops", drinking "Irish coffee" and similar coffee+liquor recipes were common.

> I would prefer to see alco-pops and Redbull as a mixer banned from licensed premises.

Yet coffee is ok?

Banning something because of personal dislike is one of the larger problems of modern society. The law should not be used to enforce opinion.

> one of the only drugs that will clear your system

Unless you are a habitual (i.e. ~daily) user, most drugs will clear your system by monday if you used them at a friday evening party. The major exception is THC, which lingers for weeks because it is lipid soluble. Most drugs are water soluble and are eliminated very quickly.

This does depends on a lot of factors. A big one is the testing method. Chemical indicator tests are terribly inaccurate, while a full (and expensive) GC-MS can probably detect almost everything (including methamphetamine after a few days).

westies jacked up on roids.

This comment explains everything. Let me guess, you live in the Northern suburbs?

I don't understand what this has to do with anything. (and for the record, no, I don't, not eastern suburbs either).

I had a feeling you might say this. Funny how you claim you don't understand the relevance of stereotyping people based on where they live geographically.

"westies jacked up on roids" indeed.

My two abiding memories of nightlife in Aberdeen, Scotland are

1) Almost getting mugged - when I was not in the best part of the city admittedly,

2) Seeing a guy staggering about that had just been hit in the face with a broken bottle.

A few episodes like that, add in sensationalist reporting and activist local politicians and you could easily imagine a situation where local night-life gets thrown out with the bathwater.

People get drunk. They fight and they do stupid shit. It's what they do.

I think the main issue is that Sydney is so spread out and there is very little late night public transportation.

That means a night out for most people ends with a very expensive taxi bill (Uber has helped somewhat though).

If one can only go out drinking very occasionally, the tendency is to overdo it on those times you do.

It goes further: http://stoneyroads.com/2016/01/there-is-now-a-lockout-law-fo...

And people actually -want- overregulation in America. This time it's under the guise of Sanders (who wants the government involved in every part of your life), and Trump, (who seeks to alienate congress).

Here's the thing, large government just doesn't work. Learn from history.

Let Sydney be emblematic of city planning and nanny statism gone awry (as it always does).

At first I heard the falling crime stats and thought it's working but then you start seeing all the businesses going to the wall and you realise it isn't.

There are to many moralists in Australia. They abhor people having a fun night out.

Moralising against the moralists, huh?

There are far too many assaults caused by alcohol, and the levels of alcoholism and domestic violence caused by alcohol in Australia is a real problem.

Prove it.

Alcohol consumption in Australia has been steadily falling, and yet only now is it a massive social problem.

Sure, I refer you to:

https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/health-topics/alcohol-guidelines/al...

Actually, alcohol consumption has always been a problem. It is only now that we are even beginning to try to tackle the problem.

So consumption has decreased and yet violence has increased?

Alcohol consumption in and of itself is not a problem. What is a problem is the behaviours a minority of people exhibit when they consume alcohol.

Why is it the majority of people have to suffer because of a minority of arseholes? Because of wowsers.

How do you propose to prevent that minority from causing problems for the rest of us? I quite enjoy a drink myself, so I'd be interested in your solution.

Sadly I don't have one. I wish our media was less vapid, and "think of the children"-ish.

I mean the fact that yesterday the police spoke to a restaurant[1] over there wine list is absurd.

1 https://www.broadsheet.com.au/sydney/food-and-drink/article/...

Oh, I totally agree that that was ridiculous overreach. The police didn't do themselves any favours whatsoever on that one. It's like some members of the Constabulary have no idea how to judge what is a serious issue and what isn't.

sounds like its more like Perth now...

Perth is actually doing an excellent job shaking off the 'dullsville' tag. A lot of restrictions have eased and the city is flourishing as a result. Hopefully even more so in the next few years with projects such as Elizabeth Quay and the Northbridge City Link finishing up.

Hell, Perth is doing everything it can to booze itself up .. it is after all, one of the first Australian cities to just let the Casino mafia take over.

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