Is Sydney Really This Bad? [Lockout Laws]

[Hvr]

Definitely not just armchair critics-I have already linked to articles from Sydney and Adelaide ED departments re the level of alcohol fuelled violence.
And why can California support a vibrant music scene with no trouble attracting tourists when last drinks are 2am-an hour before Sydney's last drinks.Same for DC,Hawaii,Boston,Philly and most other States of the USA.

And I can add Chicago to the safe list. I love going to a blues bar and have never felt unsafe whilst there or outside even when leaving at 2-3am. No excessively drunk people causing problems.

Why can't we do it here?

 

[Milefest]

And I can add Chicago to the safe list. I love going to a blues bar and have never felt unsafe whilst there or outside even when leaving at 2-3am. No excessively drunk people causing problems.

Why can't we do it here?

...you can. You're actually going to be safer drinking here, statistically.

 

[anat0l]

One thing that no one from the anti-lockout laws hasn't yet well grasped about the proponents and supporters of lockout laws.

They. Don't. Care. About. You.

They. Don't. Trust. You.

No one cares that a marginal fleeting "economic" (if that is a viable word for it) section of the city centre has been decimated at the expense of less people being killed. Businesses come and go according to social expectations, changing regulatory environment and free market forces - most of us are told to just suck up and roll with it, and the complainers can go to hell and wallow, that's liberal capitalism. Most of the generations of people who advocate for lockouts probably don't see any tangible benefit in the loss of the industries or businesses concerned, and would gladly see them move on to be replaced with more useful businesses (especially Kings Cross). No one cares that there's no rush of people in the city making it a vibrant atmosphere and so on - after all, the easiest and definitive way to reduce or eliminate risk is to remove the source of the risk, rather than engineer controls on it.

Not one prominent proponent of lockouts has come out on the media (or the media must be selectively blind) to actively say that they empathise with the late night entertainment system and hope there might be a way that they can help them reinvent and adapt to the lockout situation. Or at least it hasn't been well publicised, which is a shame because it should and that's not a bad way to come halfway on this issue. But broadly, that's because they couldn't give a stuff. The main thing is that some people were severely under pressure to reduce the violence, reduce the risk and reduce the pressure on hospitalisation services. They didn't have a lot of time to do it. So they went for the easiest option. It may not be the best one, but it seems it was the one of least risk because there obviously wasn't a more well thought out and laid out alternative plan on the part of the anti- camp, otherwise there would not be this reaction, which has now been replicated in another Australian city under similar political "duress". And so far, it seems to have "worked". If it didn't work at all, then maybe the anti- crowd would have the right to pin every proponent against the wall and tell them, "told ya so, and now you've taken a whole community down with your pithy effort". But something is working, and that's a tough position to argue back against.

One big argument that keeps coming out is that if you apply lockouts to the city centre, the violence that was "eradicated" in the city centre will simply be shifted to other districts. Has there been any veritable evidence that this has happened yet? I also think it's a long bow to draw that domestic violence has increased as a result of lockouts, when it is arguable that domestic violence has had an increasing trend for quite a long time now, no doubt also spurred by an increase in reporting.

Yes there's some sweeping assumptions there. So sue me.

 

[trixydoza]

They. Don't. Care. About. You.

They. Don't. Trust. You.

(...shivers...)

 

[JohnK]

And I can add Chicago to the safe list. I love going to a blues bar and have never felt unsafe whilst there or outside even when leaving at 2-3am. No excessively drunk people causing problems.

Why can't we do it here?

Because Australians are some of the worst behaved people in the world when it comes to controlling alcohol intake. You of all people should know this as you frequent Thailand as often as I do.

No one here has answered why so many young(er) Australians want to end up paraletic on a Friday/Saturday night? This is a huge problem in our society.

 

[drron]

There is in fact no rapid increase in domestic violence in NSW over the last 10 years.
http://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Documents/BB/bb61.pdf
Domestic Violence

It has however had greater publicity which is a good thing as an average rate of 400 per 100000 population is still too high.

As well anyone who has to drink for several hours in a night has gone over the safe limit for alcohol consumption and risks long term health problems.The safe limits are 4 drinks for males and 2 for females and as I keep telling people it doesn't mean you can have 6 AFDs and consume 28 or 14 drinks on the 7th day.

 

[Milefest]

It's like banning cars and being surprised car accidents decrease.

Of course the areas where there is no ban, the violence will increase.

A lot of the people here seem to be against adults making adult decisions - it may risk their own well-being (to a minuscule degree) but that's their decision to make (just like driving a car).

 

[JohnK]

A lot of the people here seem to be against adults making adult decisions - it may risk their own well-being (to a minuscule degree) but that's their decision to make (just like driving a car).

Your bias is quite clear.

Oh and adults don't get paraletic drunk 2-3 days a week.

 

[esseeeayeenn]

Your bias is quite clear.

Oh and adults don't get paraletic drunk 2-3 days a week.

I hate to be a pedant but since you keep using the word, it's "paralytic".

 

[BAM1748]

, the easiest and definitive way to reduce or eliminate risk is to remove the source of the risk, rather than engineer controls on it.

You are correct, the proper way to mitigate risk is to remove it if possible. Then engineer an solution, as a final answer I could wear some PPE when I next decide for a late night drink.

 

[JohnK]

I hate to be a pedant but since you keep using the word, it's "paralytic".

You are right. Off to the grammar thread....

 

[whatmeworry]

Their were fears that the 2000 euro group match of Germany V England would result in crowd violence. Didn't eventuate as most of the fans were stoned in the Amsterdam cafes.
BBC SPORT | EURO2000 | ENGLAND | Hash keeps England fans happy

 

[medhead]

Why do we need those yellow 'wet floor' signs? Sure, almost slipped over in the office foyer a few weeks back, but my soles are a bit worn

In your workplace where your boss is in the frame if they don't provide a safe workplace. Those yellow signs are precisely about making you responsible for your safety. You have been warned if you break your neck because of your worn soles that's your problem. =NOT nanny state.

Why do we need clear, total pricing? After all I can add up ticket price + fuel surcharge + cc fee + trolley dolly moisturiser/pantyhose tax clawback charge and doing it in my head wards off Alzheimers

To stop dodgy A-holes ripping people off. The unscrupulous are everywhere and they have no problem cheating people to rip them off.

A safety risk assessment for my local street party? My bbq is clean - heats burns all the nasties away and a bucket is on-hand to manage fire risk

Indeed, it's that easy that you've wasted more time whinging about it than the time it would take to do the assessment.

Hats and sunscreen for kids: pfffft, never in my day, sure got the odd sunspot so what?

My family members got melanoma and died. pffft indeed.

Drinking stubbies at the public pool - I'm not clumsy and won't drop one so what's the big deal?

But other people are and do. What is your reaction when you slice open your foot on the glass someone else dropped?

Stand Your Ground laws ...whoops, sorry got a little mixed up with New Hampshire. Live Free or Die! (your choice BTW but GTF off my lawn)
Priority Boarding at Qantas. Don't need a policy, don't want a policy. As a NB, I can be trusted to use it responsibly.

WT-actual-F? Sorry buddy the footpath is not your lawn. Plenty of NB's who simply can't be trusted. If you can be trusted, good on you. Still, in that case, the policy doesn't affect you.

This kind of "Nanny state" Governance is not limited to entertainment. Every aspect of our lives is becoming someone else's responsibility.
Where once "Caveat Emptor" was the first thing you considered when buying products or services, today there is a swathe of regulation, compliance and auditing.
It won't be long before even the simple and mundane will require a detailed set of instructions, (in writing), warranties providing protection for the most idiotic of actions, all in the name of "Consumerism".
I could go on about the restrictions now on how we do everything from child rearing to buying life insurance, but I suspect you all know what I mean.

Oh great, lets go back to rip off the customer. Having to be able to demonstrate that a product is fit of purpose and does meet standards actually puts the responsibility onto the people who are responsible for that stuff. If we take a hypothetical charger for a computer. If that charger is found to have a faulty design such that it might catch on fire or shock the user of the computer. Is the Emptor responsible for the faulty design? No, IMO. So why should the seller transfer responsibility to the Emptor?

Most of that though is evidence of the "Bureaucratic State" rather than the Nanny state.The bureaucracy must justify their existence by continually putting out mission statements,regulations,policies and such like no matter how that impacts on the efficient running of their fiefdom.Health is a good/bad example.

I'm pretty sure the bureaucrats in the Prime Minister's office didn't want to be enforcing state government WHS legislation. Yet that was the demand placed on them.

What is actually happening is that bureaucracy is being cut back significantly. That's why we have regulations that specify performance standards, for things like X-ray machines. The bureaucracy no longer tests those things, those bureaucrats are long gone. So the owner of the X-ray is now responsible for making sure that don't over expose people to radiation. Seems perfectly reasonable for the person making money from the machine to take responsibility for that machine.

I can loan you a textbook on changes to the public service over the last 50 years if you like.


Here's another one on the bureaucracy. 14 years ago, as a bureaucrat, I used to have to assess the radiation dose to people participating in medical research, make a recommendation to a quango via my boss about whether the exposure was acceptable and hence the research could proceed. It was tedious stuff and could take months to get that final approval.
The evil bureaucrats have since brung in regulations that put the assessment requirement onto the community, completely free of bureaucracy. Now those bureaucrats are out of a job, the bureaucracy has been slashed. I'm now in "industry" turning out tedious radiation dose assessments according to the new regulations in weeks.

 

[straitman]

To be honest, I always thought Sydney was a dump.

Maybe I should just answer the topic heading question by simply saying YES!

 

[anat0l]

It's like banning cars and being surprised car accidents decrease.

Of course the areas where there is no ban, the violence will increase.

A lot of the people here seem to be against adults making adult decisions - it may risk their own well-being (to a minuscule degree) but that's their decision to make (just like driving a car).

Bingo (underlined part). Again, this comes back to the premise that the situation is apparently so bad that the regulators have decided that people cannot be trusted to handle the situation themselves.

Of course banning reduces numbers and thus the number of incidents. If the number of car accidents in a given area was so high and no kinds of controls or signage would appear to alleviate that, they will ban cars there too. In fact, accounting for the increase in people in the CBD and the accompanying foot traffic in general, plus other factors, has been a reason for introducing measures that effectively reduce the number of vehicles in CBDs, or making it rather inconvenient. This includes forced one way streets, reduced street parking, increased clear ways, more pedestrian malls and less vehicular streets, and so on. Some of that is a decision to handle the amount of traffic rather than, say, a string of incidents where pedestrians have been struck down by vehicles. In any case, except to exemplify the whole idea of risk management in a similar fashion, it's an apples and oranges comparison.

As for the areas where the violence has increased, that can only fuel the campaign for the lockouts to be rolled out more widely, especially if hospitals in those newly affected areas report similar problems with admission volumes as that experienced by those which were in districts that had lockouts introduced. Now if the violence then goes out to the suburbs, then we'll see what the government response is, but we haven't got that far yet.

Oh and adults don't get paraletic drunk 2-3 days a week.

If your characterisation of 'adult' refers to people under, say, the age of 30 or 25, then I'm here to tell you that the age group in question does not have a monopoly on said unusual activity.

If your characterisation of 'adult' refers to the mental maturity of a person (i.e. someone who actually knows what they are doing and is responsible, irrespective of their biological age), then your point doesn't really mean very much.

You are correct, the proper way to mitigate risk is to remove it if possible. Then engineer an solution, as a final answer I could wear some PPE when I next decide for a late night drink.

You could, but your PPE would need to be effective in reducing the risk of the situation, whilst also accounting for any new introduced risks as a result of that action.

It'd probably be a bit socially awkward, but hey, you could start a new fashion trend (or revive an older one... maybe Village People?)

 

[Milefest]

Bingo (underlined part). Again, this comes back to the premise that the situation is apparently so bad that the regulators have decided that people cannot be trusted to handle the situation themselves.

Well according to crime statistics it's incredibly low and was decreasing before the lockouts.

You don't think a legal adult is responsible enough to make a decision that may risk their own well-being?

 

[JohnK]

If your characterisation of 'adult' refers to people under, say, the age of 30 or 25, then I'm here to tell you that the age group in question does not have a monopoly on said unusual activity.

If your characterisation of 'adult' refers to the mental maturity of a person (i.e. someone who actually knows what they are doing and is responsible, irrespective of their biological age), then your point doesn't really mean very much.

So I lose either way?

A responsible adult does not decide they are going to get paralytic drunk every Friday and Saturday night and screw the consequences. That is what these people are doing. Holding 2-3 RTDs in their hand at a time is not my idea of a quiet enjoyable drink. Especially when they have arrived at the venue fully loaded anyway.

I like to call these people kids as they never seem to grow up. Even when they have kids and a train wreck of a family.

 

[anat0l]

You don't think a legal adult is responsible enough to make a decision that may risk their own well-being?

I'm not saying that. Your elected representatives and everyone who is behind these lockout laws are saying that... at least with respect to the particular activities that are affected.

I'm going to risk the broken record and say it again: They don't trust you.

So I lose either way?

A responsible adult does not decide they are going to get paralytic drunk every Friday and Saturday night and screw the consequences. That is what these people are doing. Holding 2-3 RTDs in their hand at a time is not my idea of a quiet enjoyable drink. Especially when they have arrived at the venue fully loaded anyway.

I like to call these people kids as they never seem to grow up. Even when they have kids and a train wreck of a family.

Why does this have to be about loss and what not?

From what you are saying, an 'adult' is defined as someone who is responsible. It has nothing to do with biological age.

But then, saying something like "an adult doesn't get paralytic drunk 2-3 times a week" is kind of pointless, as we know that kind of conduct is inherently irresponsible. But if an adult is supposed to be responsible, then they wouldn't be doing it by definition. So what's the point of giving that kind of line?

I would also argue that the definition of an adult as understood by the average person on the street would be understood more loosely than what you are trying to describe. What you are trying to describe is the behaviour becoming of a responsible or irresponsible adult.

But we're not here for a definitional debate. One interesting part of this all is that lockout laws don't really stop people who want to drink themselves silly from doing so. It might remove them from particular areas where other (responsible) people frequent, thus reducing "collateral damage", but such people could easily just drink themselves into stupor at home as well (most likely at a reduced cost, too). I guess if they are at home, they still might end up in hospital (with assaulting paramedics on the way to go with it, why not) all the same as if they had had a drunken rampage in the city centre. But at least, assumed, they won't be dragging others to the hospital with them because they caused a violent incident or punched someone's lights out.

 

[OATEK]

Well according to crime statistics it's incredibly low and was decreasing before the lockouts.

You don't think a legal adult is responsible enough to make a decision that may risk their own well-being?

Only in the last week an "adult" male was sentenced to gaol for a one-punch assault after drinking at least 10 schooners of beer.

I would be lying on the floor after 10 schooners, and any attempt at a one-punch haymaker with my arthritic hands would deliver me to hospital with a mangled hand and leave the other person laughing.

To deliver a punch that kills, or in this case caused permanent disability, generally requires and involves the strength of younger men. No person over the age of 18 is likely to make "adult" or rational decisions after 10+ schooners, and trying to uncouple abuse of alcohol as part of the problem is not facing up to reality.

So there is a huge difference between the idea that "a legal adult is responsible enough to make a decision that may risk their own well-being" by say bungy jumping as against drinking to excess, losing their social inhibitions, and taking out all the frustrations in their life on an unsuspecting victim.

 

[dajop]

Only in the last week an "adult" male was sentenced to gaol for a one-punch assault after drinking at least 10 schooners of beer.

Hmm, wonder if anything else was in the system in addition to the 10 schooners of beer .......