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Kiron22
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The laws, which stretch from Surry Hills to The Rocks, and Kings Cross to Cockle Bay, are stricter than anything residents and businesses have ever known: 1:30am lockouts from all venues, a 3:00am end to drink service and a 10:00pm cut-off from the selling of takeaway alcohol from all providers. Fines of up to $11,000 and/or 12 months imprisonment are the consequences for failing to comply with these new rules.
In September, a Sydney bottle shop was fined $28,000 after it was observed several times selling alcohol after 10pm.
Queensland, which also has lockout laws in place, plans to tighten the noose from July next year; 1:30am last drinks in all bars and pubs, a 1:00am lockout at all venues and a ban of rapid-consumption drinks, such as shots, from midnight. Yet hope remains for residents of other states. Perth has increased the opening times of pubs and clubs on a Sunday to accommodate the push towards a seven day economy.
“The magic you feel on the weekend in cities like London, New York, Melbourne, Paris, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and Berlin just does not exist in Sydney anymore. The streets seem empty. Instead of feeling safer the city now feels eerie and unsettling,” says Tyson Koh, a spokesperson for Keep Sydney Open, whose role is to connect the public, stakeholders and lawmakers together in the hope of finding a better way forward.
“People are angry about having Sydney turn into a retirement village, so Keep Sydney Open has evolved from representing musicians and venues to also being a group the public can get behind.”
Reclaim the Streets; a global movement that began in the UK, now holds “empowering” protest festivals that combat the “draconian” Sydney lockout laws that Loch says were created through “a manufactured moral panic”.
Thousands attended a rally organised by Reclaim last weekend, claiming that regular Sydneysiders had been “locked out” of their city by excessive rents and late-night curfews.
“We should have used a curfew as a last resort. Instead it was the first,” Loch said.
“They disproportionately punish young people, musicians and DJ’s. We lost at least 30 venues in Kings Cross and Oxford Street. One particularly well-liked dingy queer bar, Phoenix, hadn’t had an issue in the entire time it was operating.”
“After the lockouts the owner decided it was no longer financially viable. Phoenix was refurbished as a high-end food venue, but there was a brawl on opening night.”
The laws, introduced in 2013 were designed to make the streets safer, not to stop people from going out completely. They were implemented following the separate one-punch deaths of two young men, Thomas Kelly and Daniel Christie. Both were simply looking for a night out in Sydney’s infamous Kings Cross and never made it home.
Following the deaths, a cacophony of voices, including the victims’ distraught parents, called for something to be done to end of the “scourge of violence” staining Sydney’s once-safe streets. Pushing back against these voices, many commentators and politicians labelled the reaction a moral panic - a solution to a problem that had been greatly exaggerated.
“It was a classic moral panic,” NSW senator David Leyonhjelm said. “There’s no question it’s a sort of collective punishment for the guilt of individuals.”
Koh believes that the issue of alcohol-fuelled violence was exaggerated by the NSW government, pointing to figures which show violence was at a 10-year low before lockout laws were installed by then-NSW premier Barry O’Farrell.
Others who opposed the laws claimed that they simply weren’t a solution at all. Chief among their concerns was that the laws would either make people angry when the taps ran dry at 1.30am, or that violence would simply move elsewhere.
The chance of violence occurring at 3am - when all partygoers are suddenly pushed onto the streets - has been an ongoing fear.
The restrictions have pushed revellers to the city’s outer suburbs, where locals say revellers clash with the area’s LGBT community. At last weekend’s Reclaim rally, thousands of inner-west residents took to the streets demanding changes to the laws, claiming alcohol-fuelled violence had simply been pushed out of the CBD and out of mind.
“Wanting to tackle violence is a worthy cause,” says Koh, “but these laws have not done that. They have moved alcohol-fuelled assaults to the eastern and inner-western suburbs, and because the curfew addresses the wrong end of the problem, the areas that have lockouts are still riddled with violence and sexual assaults.”
Some venues on King Street and Enmore Road in Newtown have enacted their own voluntary lockouts to keep the violence from their doorstep and other suburbs surrounding the city centre are also feeling the impact.
According to the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOSCAR), the likes of Surry Hills, Redfern and Pyrmont have recorded a rise in crime since the inception of the new laws. A review in early 2015 found assault rates had dropped by 40% in Kings Cross and 26% in the CBD, but had risen slightly near the Star casino, where the lockout laws do not reach.
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