What’s with the Iemma government?
DRINKING a glass of wine in your own home could be illegal under extreme new liquor laws that rubber-stamp the use of no-go alcohol zones in NSW.
All kinds of nanny state madness, I guess.
Apparently, unlike the NT intervention, it’s up to “communities” to request a no grog zone where even drinking in the home will be banned. But who are those communities? And who gets to say whether “chronic alcohol abuse” is going on? All I can see resulting from this is a push from some residents in areas such as Newcastle’s CBD with a big concentration of nightspots in one area to ban takeaway sales. Presumably respectable citizens won’t expect the booze police to knock on their door and confiscate their chardy, and all the bourgie restaurants on Darby Street will fall outside the zone. It may also of course result in all sorts of puritan dogooders forming unrepresentative action groups or whatever in their local hood. Just stupid.
Ps: I’m not picking Newcastle as a random example. Exactly this scenario was proposed earlier in the year at the start of the binge drinking moral panic when some residents were taking legal action for hours and takeaway sales restrictions on pubs in the Newcastle nightclub district.
Elsewhere: Much more from Darryl Mason.
I was up in Newcastle visting family, and I’m told that now there’s more violence up in Maitland because people are staying closer to their homes, and not bothering to head out into the CBD.
I didn’t get to test out the new restrictions, as I’d had too much to drink already at a wedding at City Hall. I can manage to get quite drunk on wine alone and didn’t need help from mixer drinks or shots. It would have been interesting to see though the restrictions in action. Last time I was up, we were goignt o head out into town after being at a bbq, and then realised that it was 12:$5 already and by the time we’d hit town, noone would let us in :\
I live in the Newcastle and am hearing that business is booming in pubs outside the Newcastle CBD area, ie the pubs in suburbs such as Cardiff and out at Maitland and Cessnock. A newpaper report last week stated that crime is down in the city (but also mentioned that it may not be because of the lock-down alone, but also the unseasonal cold and wet weather could have been keeping people away). But if report just focused on the CBD and missed rising violence in Maitland, than it seems the problems are just being displaced.
I am not a fan of these measures and believe that they were put in place as a knee jerk reaction. I suspect that the airing on ABC of a program about binge drinking helped to soften community objections. I believe that Bryon Bay had similar problems but managed to cut down violent assaults by about 80% through more creative solutions. If I recall correctly the local club owners got cameras installed in the streets and scanned IDs at the venue doors.
If the city of Newcastle wants to market itself as a tourist and conference destination then we should be looking at these more creative solutions.
This applies to NSW a state, as well, we will continue to lose tourism and business investment and even population to QLD if we continue down the “Nanny State” path.
Bring back compulsory IQ testing for politicians.
Oh, hang on…
So when can we visit the speakeasies? And are sales of large bathtubs increasing?
Well it would also help they got serious about enforcing current laws regarding serving people who are drunk as well as public drunkeness. The fundamental objection is not about people drinking but about drunkeness and the violence and property damage that flows from that. Unfortunately people see their only option is to ask for completely alcohol bans.
I hardly drink at all these days, but if they bring this rubbish in where I live, I’ll go out of my way to have a cask of wine in my fridge to offer to visitors. Thing is, occasionally the good people of Armidale do get into a morasl panic about drunken uni students spewing in shop doorways. And quite frankly, though I have no idea about what the situation is now, because its so long since I’ve gone up town on a Friday or Saturday night, it’d have to be something pretty special to get me out. But I’m still against this ridiculous law.
Seems to me we are voting far too many wowsers into government,in all political parties. Its got to stop!
And this in the state that had the Rum Rebellion.
Queensland pioneered the 3am lockout in 2006, and I believe – combined with other security measures and responsible alcohol service – it’s been fairly effective in reducing violence.
I went to Newcastle in September 06 (and liked the joint), and I can’t say I noticed anything particularly outrageous or threatening on Friday and Saturday nights, and I was staying right in the hub of the pubs.
What does Iemma Labor have to do with the NT? And wasn’t it the NT and QLD aboriginal communities themselves that demanded the grog bans? Remember a QLD ministerial staffer got the sack for bringing a bottle of wine onto a remote aboriginal community.
If you read the article, there are parallels drawn with the NT intervention. I’m not sure about the NT, but in Qld, grog bans were requested by some of the communities in question at any rate.
But I think one of the salient differences is that Bondi, Newcastle or Dubbo or wherever aren’t exactly communities in the same sense. Hence the concern about unrepresentative loudmouths taking over!
This really is back to the future in one way. In Brisbane, until the 1930s, there were “local option” plebiscites in various areas as to whether hotel licences could be granted. The Proddy middle class suburbs voted no, the Catholic working class suburbs voted yes. It actually explains why some areas of the city still have very few licenced outlets.
Hi drinkers,
there used to be “dry” areas in leafy eastern suburbs of Melbourne (circa Camberwell?) but this only meant no retail outlets such as pubs, bottle shops.
The wowsers never had the presumption to ban DRINKING behind closed doors!
I’m with Paul Burns on this one: raise a glass and drink a toast and enjoy a very pleasant and sociable form of civil disobedience!
Mark at 7.
I’ve played in a stack of punk bands in Newcastle, and been around the pub-CBD in the wee hours of the morning, and things can get pretty gnarly. People don’t head out until quite late, so the nasty stuff tends to happen very late, well after midnight.
They’ve made a lot of changes to drinking in Newcastle of late – you can’t get shots and bombs, etc. I can’t help feeling that this is addressing a symptom rather than a cause. Why is alcohol related violence occurring at such an allegedly high rate in Newcastle rather than anywhere else?
Currently the alcohol-free zones laws are unserviceable. Apparently if your are caught drinking in an alcohol free zone, you have to be asked to ‘move along’ twice before you are actually committing a crime. So I suppose that the curfew and other laws in Newi are designed to cut the supply of alcohol, when the problem is not so much what happens in the pubs as what happens out on the streets as Chris said at 5.
‘The fundamental objection is not about people drinking but about drunkeness and the violence and property damage that flows from that’
It seems to me that useable laws which target public drunkeness and drinking in alcohol free zones would be more helpful than making it legal to drink in your own home. But if they can’t police the current alcohol free zone laws how would extending these zones onto private property be any more enforceable?
Jobby, happy to take your word for it. Being older than I once was, my recollection was that I was done with drinking and asleep by 1am on the Saturday night I was out and about in Newcastle.
oops that should say ‘illegal’ not legal above. (note to self always double check before posting)
In water cooler discussions around here people have suspicions that the violence is caused by other factors besides binge drinking. Things such as ice use, bored under age street kids, groups coming from places like the central coast causing trouble and then jumping on the trains and heading home (apparently hard to identify these people as they are not locals), and drink spiking which is a big problem in the area are all being touted as factors in the violence, and solutions for these problems are not being explored.
That’s the problem with the binge drinking focus – it ignores all sorts of other factors that lead to violence, and the solutions proposed will probably fail, while annoying others who aren’t the problem!
Yeah nothing like a local action group of people who have only lived in the area 5 years to ruin your fun. Newcastle IS the classic case of adressing symptoms rather than causes. If there was a half visible police presence and more taxis and buses so people could get home after a night out (its common to wait an hour for a taxi and theres next to no public transport) there wouldnt be a problem.
Isn’t Camberwell and its close surrounds still a dry area?
Amen Stuart.