Now here’s some reasonably good news for the good folk of Queensland: The state government up there is on the verge of binning their controversial lockout laws, which were due to take full effect on February 1st this year.
A trial of some aspects of the laws has reportedly found that sweet fuck all has changed in Brisbane’s nightclub and entertainment districts, and that clubs had been using their extended hours passes in collusion with each other to ensure that places like Fortitude Valley remained more or less business as usual.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk appears to have bowed to pressure from club owners, who instead are proposing the trial of an ID scanning system that would help keep problem individuals out of bars.
The scanning system would allow bars and clubs to input data, but not retrieve it; data collected would be stored on a “secure” government database, along with any blacklist of problem patrons.
The report on the first six months of drink restrictions found that there was not one weekend since July 1st, when the trial was implemented, that patrons in Fortitude Valley were unable to get a drink after 3am. This came as the result of clubs using their 12 allocated permits for extended trade on alternate weekends, rather than on special occasions like New Year’s as intended, to more-or-less keep a rotating roster of late-trading establishments going.
The proposed ID-scanning system was put forward by pubs and clubs as a compromise to getting the start of the lockout either delayed, or scrapped altogether.
State Cabinet is meeting today to discuss the lockout laws, with the expected outcome being at least a lengthy delay.
Source: Courier Mail.
Photo: Jeff Greenberg/Getty.
