Pratt calls for the dead center to get deader

its great to see people demanding the gummint ‘do something’ when its people who ignore all existing laws anyway who are the cause of the problem.

boomacat is right. gummints should stay out of citizens lives as much as possible.

more coppers would help, but the issue is idiot behaviour and irresponsible serving of grog to drunks.

existing laws should be enforced before enacting new ones.

I was a chef and quite regualrly got shunted out of teh Gypsy bar at closing – this was not a result of doof partys or drugs – It was because you get g’d up from working 200+ covers in 5 or so hours from 6pm. By the tme you get home and change/shower its midnight/1am and you’re still g’d up from work. I oppose this vehemently. Typically trying to treat the symptom – not the problem.
If police actually had a force that could be seen in civic* – I am sure a lot less meanies would cause a ruckus

* = Not having a go at police , as certainly their hands are tied all the way up to Ken Moroney, Chris Ellison and further.

it is an abuse of civil liberties to impose a curfew.

vg’s got a point – who the hell is drinking big at that hour? I have always wondered about how licencees stay within their legal obligations in terms of refusing to serve intoxicated persons and staying open until that hour.

…and I neglected to add, I would love to see a spreadsheet of exactly how much alcohol bars sell after, say, 3 am. Does the amount sold actually cover wages etc? People would say that they would sell a ton of grog, but I imagine alcohol consumption decreases the drunker people get.

I would be all for the lockout idea. If you’re not in by 3 then you’re not in. As someone says, a cultural change is needed. Go out a bit earlier if you want to have a big night. We aren’t Sydney or Melbourne, where the night starts at 2

I don’t see why, as a law abiding adult citizen, I shouldn’t be able to decide when I go out and when I come home.

Pratt and his paternalist supporters can piss off as far as I’m concerned.

The pubs in the UK close at 11, Stella, and gee – no violence there. No sir.

A curfew is not going to solve this problem. I do agree with your assessment that there needs to be a more stringent set of conditions on the responsible service of alcohol, though.

However, regardless of what we do, you’re not going to stop the odd dickhead getting a skinful and thumping someone.

The other side of the curfew argument is if you impose a 4am curfew (i.e. bars close and people get turfed out at 4) you will have a mass of drunken people all hitting the cab rank about 5 past 4. Thats when the BIG problems start.

I don’t see why licenced premises are open until 5am anyway. If their licences ended at say 2am then it would force people to go out earlier or drink less. Not too many sober people are out after 2am anyway. People don’t head into town until 11pm (after they have left some other party/function). I think that a cultural change should occur which prompts people to go out earlier and finish drinking sooner. As it stands, people seem to go to parties, get pissed and then decide that they need more alcohol and head into town to get it. If liquor licencing were any sort of force, they would be constantly fining pubs and clubs for irresponsible service of alcohol.
Give liquor licencing to the police who have an interest in cleaning up the debacle that is at the moment. And yes I realise that more police would be needed to enforce this.
When I went out in WA as a youngster, virtually everything closed at midnight. If you couldn’t buy piss, you couldn’t drink it and bed was the obvious option.

yeah, passes to leave the house would be the next step.

Kind of reminds me of having to get a toilet key at school.

Ich denke dass, die eine gute Idee ist!

Boomacat – Then there could be passes to leave your house. Bring back the Gestapo and the good old phrase.. Ihre Pass bitte.. (Your Papers please). With on the spot shootings if you are out of line.

Pratt has a good idea here, but doesn’t take it far enough.

What’s really needed is a law that says no one is ever allowed to leave their houses at any time unless it is to go to work/uni/school or other activity deemed appropriate by him and a bunch of his right wing stupid arse so called liberal mates.

Then there would be NO street violence.

Well there’s two completely different problems getting lumped together here

one is drunks getting punchy with each other and with bouncers

the other is criminals preying on people who are drunk late at night

we’re not going to get anywhere as long as those two things are being lumped together.

Curfew is a joke. If you closed all the shops and stopped people going into civic all the time there would be no crime too. This is just a knee jerk reaction. When you hang around other drunks on the streets there is a risk of violence learn to avoid it rather than expect the government to keep you safe.

yeah johnboy, im in hospitality work now, Im used to leaving at 2am, if not 4am of the friday, saturday nights.

What about closing the roads between the hours of 8am and 6pm? That’s when most accidents seem to occur, and the lazy sons of bitches should still be at work instead of driving during those hours. No one has an excuse; they should be contributing to our GDP.

(I, for one, would not be impressed with closing Civic off at any hour, if only in the interests of business. So much for Pratt for being a liberal.)

Based on my experience with Brissie’s 3am lockout, all the curfew really achieves is a largely extended queue for the cabs at 3:05. In Brisbane this actually resulted in increased violence at and around cab-ranks, as those locked out got increasing agitated by the wait.

There were also a few suggestions that a lockout increases the risk of inebriated and defenseless girls becoming separated from friends, and hence being more at risk from things that go bump in the night – although I dont know that this was ever substantiated.

Maybe he was trying to wrong-foot Corbell by saying something other than “More Police”, but lacks the imagination to think of something appreciably different.

But AD, imagine the cool/crazy memories you could have had if you’d been in a war zone, instead of hanging around Civic until 5 in the morning???

Young people have it too easy nowadays!

Actually, I’m surprised the Pratt hasn’t been banging on about needing more Police instead of just bringing in a curfew.

Something needs to be done. Two of My mates were randomly bashed and robbed last thursday on city walk (garema end) by six blokes unprovoked at about 2 or 3am. Apparently there were a few attacks on the same night similar kind of story

All a curfew will do though is enhance canberra’s rep as a boring town and will lead to young people leaving as soon as they can.

I am personally not capable of going out past 2 or 3 anyway these days (and no matter what seem to wake up at 7!!) but when I was younger I loved staying out til 6 or 7 am with or without the aid of drugs. Made lots of great friends and have got heaps of cool/crazy memories.

Maybe if CCTV was better used, or there were more cops out it would be safer. Or maybe safer if we can get rid of the kind of people who do this kind of thing. But a curfew is just idiotic really.

“younger folk who don’t get out of bed before midday?”

They should be sent to Iraq to fight in the War Against Terror (TM) so the lazy little shits can’t sleep in all the time!

johnboy: yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. Those out looking to beat people up for their wallets would probably be a lot happier with less people wandering around Civic.

Just a thought, isn’t the place safer (from robberies if not random violence) with more people out on the streets rather than less?

My experience with these lockouts (albeit limit) was in Wagga Wagga, the town so good they had to name it twice. In Wagga, the lockout is from 1am. Personally for me, all it meant was that instead of ducking out for a kebab then heading back to the pub, people would just drink through till when ever the pub closed. After all, why risk leaving when you know you can’t get in anywhere? That said though, the police did claim that it resulted in less violence.

The biggest risk is that you rush to get to a place by lockout and when you arrive discover that it is shit. You can’t go anywhere else! It is stay or go home.

Hospitallity workers? thier working day doesn’t finish until 10 or 11,

shift workers?

younger folk who don’t get out of bed before midday?

clubbers who’ve taken a pill and won’t be able to sleep anyway?

There are plenty of reasons to be out that late which aren’t violent.

I can’t understand why these places need to be open until so late in the morning. I worry about people who are still hanging around Civic at 4am: they need to get a life!