Look, cards on the table here. The last person people need to be chiming in on just about anything is the guy who sees the gunless Australia as a nation of victims, or the guy who spends his time as a publicly elected representative trolling and abusing people on Twitter…
@mandymcn Sanctimonious outrage. Spare me. Witch.
— David Leyonhjelm (@DavidLeyonhjelm) January 4, 2016
@labourareliars I’d call you a cunt. And probably a rude name after that.
— David Leyonhjelm (@DavidLeyonhjelm) January 4, 2016
…but in terms of protecting freedom of choice and individual liberties, there’s barely anyone in Parliament more staunchly in favour of the Government keeping its thumb out of the butt of the public.
“Yes, violence causes injury and doctors are paid to treat the injuries. But their involvement is a matter of choice; they are not compelled “to clean up the awful toll”. Indeed, they don’t have to do trauma or emergency medicine, or even medicine itself, at all. Moreover, no-one is forced to join the police or ambulance service.”
“In fact, doctors demanding lockouts because they don’t like treating the victims of violence is equivalent to teachers demanding parents keep dumb kids at home. They should do their jobs, or find a job that they’d rather do.”
He also blasts the notion of people in well-paid professions spurring laws that cost other people their jobs.
“Furthermore, there is something particularly unbecoming about upper middle-class professionals whining about their (well-paid) jobs. There’s a part of me that wants to send the lot of them to the nearest Centrelink so they can see how the unemployed and disabled respond to their grumping.”
“This last point is relevant because job losses and venue closures in Kings Cross since the lockout laws have been staggering: a third of licensed venues in the area have closed. The rest are hanging on by a thread, hoping the NSW government will see sense. And it’s not just the pubs, nightclubs and dens of iniquity that are suffering. Restaurants, shops and newsagents are also closing.”
Newsagents. Yeah.
“In Melbourne [the lockout’s] implementation in 2008 led to an increase in assaults between midnight and 4am, and they were ditched three months later.”
“What worked in Victoria was increased resources and power for the Liquor Licensing Board to shut down problem areas, incentive-based programs for venues to take responsible service of alcohol seriously, increased access to late night public transport services, coupled with greater police presence on the streets.”
“Is it really necessary to destroy Sydney’s late-night culture in order to save it from alcohol-induced violence? Are the people of Sydney so different from those of Melbourne and other international cities that the only way to keep the peace is to lock them out of clubs and bars?”
“If 200 people in an ailing car factory were about to lose their jobs, politicians would be angling for taxpayer subsidies to prop up their employer. By contrast, hospitality, tourism, and sex workers are apparently expendable while their employers – pubs, bars, restaurants, strip-clubs – are written off as “vested interests”.”
If you can manage to wade through the self-aggrandising crap he brushes on with thick strokes, the crux of the article contains a very good point.
