Seemingly fed up with the constant jibes about Queensland being decades behind the rest of the country, Brisbane is doing its best to prove that it, like Sydney, can also drain the joy and economic feasibility out of its own nightlife.
While Sydney’s lockout laws faced a dickload of scrutiny and public backlash (very notably in the form of the Keep Sydney Open movement), the ebb and flow of Brisbane’s struggle against similar laws has gone relatively unnoticed, despite the risk that they, too, will deeply enshitten the current going out experience.
Thankfully, at this stage, Brisbane’s lockout situation is still not quite as bad as Sydney’s. Laws came into effect in July last year giving venues inside Queensland’s 15 ‘Safe Night Precincts‘ a ban on serving alcohol after 3am. Additionally, the bill contained a 1am mandatory lockout for Safe Night Precinct venues, that was due to come into effect July this year.
Ultimately, that part of the bill was scrapped following reports that showed little if any noticeable downturn in alcohol-related violence in the precincts, but the same bill that removed the proposed lockout also introduced mandatory ID scanning after 10pm for venues in the precincts that trade past midnight, and a halving of the number of permits issued to venues for extending their licensed hours for special events.
Just weeks after the ID scanner laws came into effect, they’ve already been causing huge problems for venues in Brisbane. Last week, a dozen French winemakers had to be turned away from The Gresham, one of Brisbane’s most prestigious bars, because two of them weren’t carrying their passports.
Venue manager Ryan Lane told ‘The Courier Mail‘ that he was not bloody happy:
“I was embarrassed that I had to turn away these international tourists in my industry. I was embarrassed that I had to explain this new law and embarrassed for my venue.“They are seventh generation winemakers but they can’t drink it after 10pm because they don’t have the right ID.”
Benjamin Nichols, venue manager at Netherworld Bar and Arcade in Fortitude Valley, says the laws have already started to fuck their shit up:
“We only generally open until 11pm most nights, but as a result of the new laws we have to scan from 10pm. That means we do almost our entire days trade, then have to scan from 10pm until 11pm. What exactly does that achieve? Beyond that, we have no smoking area, so customers smoking twice an hour are likely to get scanned 6 times in a visit.“Only a security guard can use the machine, so if they need to take a shit, we need to ask people not to come into the venue until they’ve finished up.”
Netherworld has apparently already seen a loss of trade as a result:
“The biggest issue is that there’s been no education to the public on what’s happening whatsoever. It’s difficult to communicate what they need to do because, granted, a lot of it is silly. Yes, I realise you’re a 55-year-old who has their ID on them, but no, you cannot come into the venue because it’s two days expired. So what happens is the group of 10 people who are obviously adults that the person is with end up going to another venue because one person who is clearly of drinking age has a two day expired license.“As for foreign passports, we have lots of visitors from overseas. The machines are not really ready to deal with them properly so they must be entered manually. A group of 8 international visitors came to visit and the lineup went from nothing (normal for a quiet time) to a 20-minute wait as a result. Everyone in line was frustrated because it wasn’t even busy.“One poor soul, who was in the venue for her birthday with a group of 15 and had been there for hours before, left to hug a mate she saw in the line outside – then, of course, tried to come back in with an expired ID. The ridiculousness of the law doesn’t allow for that person to re-enter the venue. It’s embarrassing.”
According to Nichols, the laws have seen them had to hire extra security and have just moved punters, dangerously, onto the street:
“As a result of the lines out the front of [Wickham Street venues] The Elephant Hotel and Prohibition, you couldn’t move on the sidewalk and people were all over the street. The scanners on that strip are going to result in someone being hit by a car and fights from frustrated punters who won’t understand why there’s a 45-minute wait to get into a venue that usually takes a minute or two.”
He’s seen a similar impact on other venues, especially in the Caxton Street precinct, which has to deal with huge numbers of people from the adjacent Suncorp Stadium:
“Caxton Street seems to be the hardest hit. Our mates over at Brewski basically weren’t given a choice. As they shared footpath dining with normal foot traffic, it would have been impossible to manage, so they’re just had to pull their license back to midnight and have to lose the trade. Good freaking luck to them on game nights, it’s going to be a shit fight to get into anywhere in less than half an hour on Caxton Street.“I know The Gresham in the city have some frustrating issues like a toilet that’s not in their licensed area, resulting in re-scanning every time you need to take a piss. That is insane.”
Dave Marshall who manages Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall on Caxton Street says they’ve had very similar problems with punters who have no idea what’s happening:
“We were promised that there would be an extensive marketing campaign so that people knew and understood what their obligations were going to have to be if they wanted to come into these precincts after 10pm.“When that did get rolled out, it was limited to [the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation]’s YouTube channel and their Facebook account which has 1,200 likes. It was basically condensed to 5 animated between-15-and-30-second videos that didn’t really give any real information.“Some guy leaning on a couch clicking his fingers and smooth jazz playing and it says like “sign in for a safe night” or something. Realistically, the questions that we’re being asked and the questions we’re having to field on the doors are questions of privacy and questions of why expired driver’s licenses, why 50-year-old’s, why this, and we can’t get straight answers from licensing as to why these things are.”
As you can see, not hugely helpful:
They also have similar concerns about to attempting to manage the number of people forced out onto the street:
“That’s a big frustration for us, in just managing the queue, managing the people, managing people’s expectations when they go out and also maintaining a safe environment. The thing that has also come from Liquor Licensing directly is that the onus is on the venue to maintain a safe environment in and around the premises. If it’s extra lines, it’s our job to police that.“In Caxton Street, we’re one of the smaller Safe Night Precincts and we were told again through those consultation meetings that there would be dedicated police officers on the street on Friday / Saturday nights and we’re just not seeing it.“If someone becomes irate, we then have to waste resources on security to detain that person and then wait even longer for the [Queensland Police Service] to arrive because there’s just no QPS presence on our street.”
Marshall says that, under provisions included in the bill, a majority of venue owners on Caxton Street had voted to dissolve the street’s Safe Night Precinct, but were forced back in when the bill was changed, and are now only allowed six instead of twelve longer trading permits to benefit from the huge crowds drawn to Caxton Street on game days and special events:
“In general, it’s not been a great year for the industry. There’s probably a million mitigating factors to that but – and I can only attest to Caxton Street – in the past, it’s always been the little bit of cream on top. Our business and Brewski never really wholly and solely relied on game days, but this year we’ve sort of felt the pinch a lot more and, if it wasn’t for our ability to milk those game days for all they’re worth, there’d probably be a lot more businesses in trouble. We’ve just had Statler and Waldorf close and they were a multi-award winning gastropub.“So I guess, for us, that’s our frustration. We’ve elected to be not involved in this Safe Night Precinct stuff and then either we’re lumped back at very much extra cost to ourselves or we relinquish our trading hours. That means not just for my staff but also for musicians, on which we spend hundreds of thousands employing every year, they will miss out on gigs. There’s no two ways about it.”
Clearly, it’s not a super great time to be a venue or a punter in Queensland. You will be shocked, shocked to learn who is exempt from this bullshit: you guessed correctly, the casinos and gaming rooms. What a surprise.
Apparently, Caxton Street venues are going to be going ahead with ID scanning tonight when a fair portion of the 50,000 people who attended Origin III tonight stumble up for a beer or six, it’ll be interesting to see how that goes down.
Photo: Benjamin Nichols.
