The Greens’ MLA Shane Rattenbury has announced the release of a discussion paper on reducing alcohol related violence.
Shane lists the key points of his plan as:
- — mandatory Responsible Service of Alcohol training to better equip staff to safely serve customers
— revision of the existing licensing fee structure to recover the cost of carrying out venue inspections from licensees
— a voluntary Liquor Accord system to provide licensees with financial incentives to adopt proven violence reduction strategies within venues
— legislation to prohibit irresponsible drink pricing
— improved lighting of public spaces and better night time public transport to foster a sense of security.
As I rarely frequent Mooseheads these days I’m curious as to what others think about alcohol related violence, but here are some points on how I recall it working:
- 1. If you’re not being a cock it’s amazing how little violence will occur.
Apologise when you bump into someone, get them another drink if you spill one. If you’re not going around groping girls you don’t know, well it’s almost impossible to grope someone’s girlfriend.
2. Walking away works well too.
Somedays you’ll just get someone’s back up or vice versa. Just going to another bar beats the hell out of getting angry and drunk.
3. Mean arseholes are mean arseholes with or without beer.
The sort of people who gang up to beat up a stranger have not been magically transformed into wankers by the demon drink, they were bastard coated bastards right from the start. Keeping them happily leering at the bottle blondes in the bar who wear too much spray tan and not enough lycra is probably safer for the public in general than turfing them out onto the street. More custodial sentences for assaults probably wouldn’t hurt either.
People who keep to points 1 and 2 rarely have much trouble in my experience (but I’m happy to be contradicted by our many readers who have to work in Civic at night). It concerns me that the trouble caused by people (usually men) of the point 3 disposition could actually be made worse by some of these proposals.
I’ve also got some concerns that any scheme which imposes penalties on bars where violence occurs could encourage security staff to engage in cover ups.
More lighting and better after hours public transport is, however, something I think we can all get behind.
Anyway it’s a discussion paper at this point, which means they’re looking for your thoughts on the issues.
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