EDITORIAL: Pub violence data flawed

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote on Saturday that Police linking data it uncovered through FOI processes confirmed ‘claims by alcohol researchers and community groups that licensing laws are too lax and that some pubs continue to sell alcohol illegally to drunks.’

This data attempts to link people involved in alcohol-related violence to venues at which they had been drinking, and is used as evidence that some venues are not enforcing Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) rules.
However the data appears seriously flawed. Some venues appear twice under different names and the list includes several venues that were not even operating during the data period of September 2007 to July 2008, for example the Hampton Court Hotel and The Chifley Hotel in Kings Cross ‘ the first has been closed for years and the Chifley has only recently opened.

Topping the incident list was The Mean Fiddler in Rouse Hill with 436 incidents, but no inner city venues appeared until number 23 on the list with The Columbian Hotel on Oxford street clocking 202 incidents. The Empire Hotel in Kings Cross ranked 26th with 197 incidents, followed by Star City at 28th with 190 incidents and Stonewall in Oxford Street with 187 incidents.

Stonewall, now with the support of Clover Moore, claims it had been unfairly included in the list of the ’48 worst’ as it had been the target of homophobic violence which had nothing to do with how well the venue was run.

Neither the Columbian nor Star City is on the current lockout list which itself is variously reported as ‘about to be replaced with a star rating’ or ‘kept on in addition to a star rating’.

Yet The Piccadilly Hotel in Potts Point is currently included on the list even though the new data ranked it at 155 with only 88 associated incidents.

Number 5,052 on the list is revealing: ‘Unknown strip club, Kings Cross’ with one incident. You can imagine the police interview that produced that one.

While alcohol researchers and community groups use ‘over-saturation’ of venues as a rationale for restrictions in entertainment precincts, the 22 worst pubs in NSW are outside these precincts with the very worst plonked in a paddock in Rouse Hill.

Alcohol-fuelled violence could therefore be seen as a product of suburban male culture rather than a reflection on how well pubs enforce RSA, itself a flawed protocol that requires bar staff to make judgements about people’s sobriety without the benefit of breath tests or the like.

Still, new temperance advocates hold to the belief that any drunk person must be the result of poor RSA practice which in turn must be the fault of any venue they name to the police, and punishing those venues will fix the problem.

Opponents of the lockout system say the relatively few people causing violence should be a police matter and they want more police on the beat late at night. They also point to several advantages of venue concentration, which the new temperance advocates ignore.