Sydney’s controversial lockout laws will be gone next month, as the Berejiklian government tries to breathe life into the city’s stagnant night time economy.
From March, Sydneysiders across the city will be able to enter a bar after 1.30am. Last drinks will be at 3.30am.
On the surface, the government is spinning this as a measure to fire up small business and drive the post-pandemic recovery. With alcohol-related violence down in the ghost towns of Kings Cross and the CBD, the laws, we’re told are no longer necessary.
But there’s also an admission that lockouts have changed Sydney for good. Kings Cross is gone, the nightclubs closed, the suburb eaten alive by the poke bowls and barre studios of Potts Point. And a whole generation who came of age with 1.30am lockouts and watery shots are now used to earlier bedtimes.
Perhaps the Berejiklian government has realised that in the midst of the moral panic which gripped Sydney in early 2014, her predecessors went too hard too fast.
A tale of two punches
Thomas Kelly and Daniel Christie were young men tragically caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both men, fresh out of high school, were felled by one-punch attacks on one of their first nights out — Christie in January 2014, only months after the initial five-year sentence for Kelly’s killer had caused public outcry.
The call for action after Christie’s death was led by the media. With politicians on holiday, and in the traditionally slow news period after New Year’s Day, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph had the perfect vacuum to push hard for politicians to “do something”, says University of Wollongong criminologist Julia Quilter.
Do something they did. Then-premier Barry O’Farrell brought parliament back early and pushed through the laws in a day — 1.30am last drinks in the CBD and the Cross, with special exemptions carved out for The Star casino and James Packer’s planned phallic monstrosity in Barangaroo. The government also introduced mandatory minimum sentences for one-punch killings.
“They had to respond, because the pressure had mounted so intensely,” Quilter told Crikey. “[O’Farrell] recalled parliament to pass the lockout laws — very little consultation with anybody.”
Did we need them?
Lost amid media anguish about unacceptable levels of violence in the Cross was this: across Sydney crime was falling.
In greater Sydney violent crime was down 2.7% between 2010 and 2014. In the city and eastern suburbs it had fallen 4.6% and 5% respectively over that period. Non-domestic violence related assault had fallen 5.7%.
The data problem, Quilter says, is complicated. While crime was indeed tracking down, if you looked at specific areas — and in particular accident and emergency statistics from the CBD and Kings Cross — things were different.
Indeed, much of the moral push for the laws came from doctors at St Vincent Hospital who rather viscerally described the “conveyor-belt of carnage” brought through their doors by alcohol-related violence. And by this metric, the lockouts worked. The same doctors reported a 25% decrease in alcohol-related facial injuries within a year of the laws.
Within three years of the laws, assaults had fallen 50% in the Cross but rose in surrounding areas.
Quilter says while she saw the need to do something about alcohol-related violence, she felt the way the laws were rushed through and the focus on policing was problematic.
“Rather, what they needed was a whole of government response, which would include things like regulatory response, improving public transport options, education campaigns around alcohol and violence,” she said.
An admission of failure?
The lockouts lasted six years. So why the backflip?
This week, Premier Gladys Berejiklian told the media Kings Cross had transformed and was ready to evolve. Several government MPs talked about revving up the 24-hour economy and becoming a global city.
But this seems to betray a tacit admission that many of the lockouts’ toughest critics were right — that Sydney has become a joyless cultural backwater fit for property developers and suburban Bible-bashers.
Quilter says the debate around lockouts, once so centred on safety and public health, is now focused on the economy.
“They’ve wanted to backtrack a bit because of the economy, and the labelling of this government as being the nanny state.”
Perhaps the government’s lockdown backflip is explained simply: it’s all about business.
The final quote is right, it is all about business. And that is the powerful lobbyists of the alcohol industry. In short, the evidence showed and shows that the lockdown reduced harm that was predominantly coming from drunkeness, in particular high intoxication made available and promoted via extended access. It’s also dubious that, once the changes were bedded in and industry PR confections are disregarded, anybody much missed the old regime. Though there were always a couple ready to supply a soundbite, perhaps a drunken one as they were stymied in their search for another open bar.
The industry has used its standard playbook relentlessly since the rules changed. Nanny state, customers demand it, just a need for more education, to once again have its interests elevated over the public good.
There is ample evidence (see work by Peter Miller at Deakin) that by about 1.30 those left in bars are becoming predominantly men, the girls have mostly gone home and said men, perhaps because the girls have gone, get progressively drunker and aggressive.
The furphy of the need to be “an international 24 hour city” often gets a run, playing to Australia’s cultural cringe. There are actually not that many such cities and sophisticated ones where you might want to be don’t work like that at all. Paris, Madrid even Barcelona and London, don’t go anything like all night. And with the exception of London they don’t have an alcohol focused young people’s binge culture dominating the night life. That culture suits Australian industry, especially the pubs, so of course they protect and promote it.
Sydney would do better improving its offerings of entertainment and food from 7pm up to about 1pm if it wants to reinvigorate itself. Currently they are well below standard compared to elsewhere.
I would politely disagree on bars staying open till late, and suggesting all late night bars lack gender balance in the small hours; backgrounded by a return of conservative ‘wowserism’.
Much depends upon the venue and the clientele it attracts, especially weekends, elsewhere some venues will not allow (large) groups of males only. Further, difference with many European cities which do have liberal licensing laws with late night venues, is that most European youth etc. seem to know how to drink and enjoy themselves responsibly, without causing social disruption.
Even Melbourne (known in ’60s/’70s Sydney for supposedly having no nightlife, to then apparently being known from the ’80s as ‘MelBerl’…) has always had private all/late night clubs, then expanded in the early/mid ’80s more broadly to pubs etc..
Simply back to the management and clientele of any individual venue or premises regarding anti-social behaviour (without the added optics of NSW Police enforcing drug possesson laws by dogs sniffing clientele in normal hotel bars on Friday afternoons….).
However, it can be challenging in Oz due to the drinking ‘culture’ e.g. rounds/shouts, bingeing, macho behaviour etc. that is encouraged; surprisingly not dissimilar to UK and/or Ireland.
Thank you for your response. I would accept some of what you say but while there will be exceptions and subcultures, the Sydney rules in my understanding were aimed at curtailing precincts where excessive drinking and accompanying violence and just stupid injuries were the price being paid by the public to fuel the profits of a few.
Re the question of gender balance, while there will be variations in different venues, often due to what they offer, the studies that gave those results were robust and consistent in their findings. And while venues may not allow in large groups men and try and maintain gender balance through who they admit, the findings were women start leaving after midnight and by 2 the male to female balance is distinctly skewed.
As to Melbourne in the 80s, there were late night pubs in the music scene but even these went only till 3 and they were thin and scattered, mainly in StKilda and Collingwood from memory. The big change in the 80’s was the Cain government’s relaxation of licensing to allow a boom in small bars and eateries with a very different vibe to the hotel beer barns. These combined with BYO restaurants to provide variety that attracted patrons to the city across generations. Kennett in the 90s not surprisingly bought into the international 24 hour city BS.
My experience of European cities, admittedly anecdotal, was that public drinking takes place within a multigenerational milieu and most places shut down by 1am, even in Spain where dinner time is 10pm.
What neither you (or the author of this article) addresses is WHY kings cross became such a focal point for violence. It’s because if a twenty year war fought on small license venues by the AHA – a mob committed to keeping alcohol licenses the exclusive domain of large clubs, beer barns and (of course) police venues. Their stunning success meant that, instead of having a wide spread of entertainment precincts with a huge variety of small venues, Sydney was stuck with a handful of late night precincts, with every late night reveller artificially jammed together into crappy clubs and onto the same streets. The lockdown was nothing more than a band aid for incredibly poor and corrupt license management. Quote the president of the AHA “Melbourne can have its tiny wine bars – Sydney doesn’t want em”.
Goodo, on clubs in Melbourne I was referring to the old English style trade or professional clubs with bar, lounge, library and dining room that morphed into night time private clubs with bars, dancefloors and some with live music (anyone could be signed in, like RSL); the very traditional still exist unchanged.
May also have coincided with the big changes after Nieuwenhuysen liquor commission in Victoria 1985 under the Cain government; recommendation and result was opening everything up.
In the early mid ’80s the clubs included the Hardware Club, Waiters’ Club, University Club (in an Office Building so no issues with neighbours), Users’ Club etc. in and round the CBD, plus all the late night cafes/bars that started emerging (even in suburbs); so after a gig finishing at 2.30-3.00 one could then continue on till the trams started…..
In Europe, my understanding of licensing, it is mostly local council regulations, as they have far greater power and knowledge to control their neighbourhoods including bars (with sticks and carrots).
The lockout laws kings Cross and elsewhere, but particularly the cross had everything to do with property development, the king hit killing that prompted this had zero connection to licensed venues in the cross, victim and killer just happened to be in that vicinity, neither had been to any venue in the suburb
My view is it was seen as a fast track way of sanitising a suburb for redevelopment, put some cute plaques in the pavement stating, once there was life here, so that 70 year old empty nesters can sit in million dollar units and feel that at heart they are somehow, bohemian
“”1.30am last drinks in the CBD and the Cross”
Ok, so that’s wrong. The laws were always lockouts at 1.30 am, which didn’t mean you were locked out, only that you couldn’t go from one bar to another after that time. Last drinks were always 3.00 am.
An ambo mate who sometimes worked that area agreed that the lockout laws made a huge difference, as evidenced by the St. Vincent’s figures.
It was a reasonable response, but as those areas have a huge LGBTQI population, quite late night dance rave type establishments got hammered. These were not really causing the problem. The one punch murders weren’t even fuelled by alcohol, this was a policing issue that they couldn’t solve otherwise.
The carve outs for The Star showed that it was always a political farce, but there is no doubting the effectiveness of the laws. Having said that, I’m happy to see it end. The gentrification of the slightly rougher edges of town seems to take the soul with it.
Mind you, my days of seeking a different watering hole after 1.30 am are long gone.
Every photo in this entire publication is of a right of centre politician.Every article is spent criticising the said politician.Suppose it is too much to ask for a balanced approach to the opinion pieces.Very angry writers.
Define balance, reason and stupidity should be given equivalence?
You must be forgetting Bernard Keane’s attacks on Dan Andrews.