Finally Matt Barrie says what everyone who actually lives in Sydney has been thinking. That gormless, weak ex-Premier O'Farrell has a lot to answer for for this short-sighted bit of stupidity. For the supposed party of small business, it's incredible how many small businesses they have sent to the wall.
Exempting the casino says all you need to know about this one. Looks pretty blatant that there's money involved....
That said, Sydney clubs were always too pretentious in my view (just my personal experience, a few years ago now though so maybe out of date). Always ended up having far more fun in other cities as the whole thing was just easier with less nonsense.
King's Cross is a residential area. If you want clubs, pubs and entertainment venues then they would be better placed in the CBD where the overspill doesn't disturb residents who just want to sleep or have a quiet night.
Kings Cross has been what it is for far longer than any residents of Kings Cross. If they don't like it they shouldn't have moved there. If you move under the flight path expect planes to fly over.
Well, things change and it appears that the residents have won.
There should be little difference going to the CBD for entertainment than going to KC.
Great, another out-of-towner with NFI. The CBD is affected by the same lock-out laws.
The residents weren't asked. It was the NSW government not that City of Sydney the introduced the laws.
Kings Cross has been what it is for far longer than any residents of Kings Cross. If they don't like it they shouldn't have moved there. If you move under the flight path expect planes to fly over.
. At one stage it was touted as one of the densest residential populations .... I wonder why
Interesting article that's going viral at the moment.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/would-the-last-person-in-sydney-please-turn-the-lights-out/news-story/3ac474b2b168b029c5080f29d2e5510a
No wonder everyone’s apparently moving to Melbourne.
Of course if you read the linked article about people moving to Melbourne there is no mention of being able to get a drink after 10pm, the reasons are better planning, cheaper housing and better transport infrastructure.
I'm sure VC would appreciate the strawman argument there.
That's not really the part of the article I found interesting, more the death of Sydney nightlife, I don't go out late nights in the city as much as I used to ( I am more of a local club guy these days ), but I think a vibrant night life does a lot for a city.
it's just a little sad to see areas of Sydney dying, it's a hard topic I know, but I wonder if they have done the right thing.
Smurf said:There's a lot of issues here but personally I do think that the huge surge in the number and geographic spread of bottle shops is a factor. There's very easy availability of take away alcohol now and it accounts for the vast majority of alcohol sold these days. It has contributed to a change in the scene from "go out partying and have some drinks" to "the whole point is to get drunk, and it's cheaper to do that at home before going out".
Nightlife in the CBD - agreed that it's a good location in principle..
Sydney's Luna Park, a place not associated with drinking, is a case in point. The Park has been there a very long time, longer than most of us have been alive, but then someone came along and built appartments next door. No surprises for guessing what happened next - they tried to shut the amusement park down and did succeed in putting some restrictions on its operation.
So far as I'm concerned that is wrong in every way - clearly the appartments are poorly built if they didn't take existing land uses into account and properly sound proof them. Secondly it's just arrogant to move next to something very long established and then complain about aspects of its operation that would be very obvious to anyone who checked out the area before moving there. An amusement park makes some noise - no surprises there, that's what happens at such places.
Residents should have a right to object to people urinating over their fences as they have a right to object if airport noise curfews are suddenly removed.
The character of our cities is changing due to massive population increases (which I disagree with) and places like Kings Cross and other quasi entertainment areas will be overtaken by demand for residential properties, like it or not.
It's a different subject but personally I don't see how there's anything gained to current residents, or Australia in general, by continuing to grow the population of Sydney in particular and also Melbourne.
They're already struggling with infrastructure etc, that's one problem. Then there's the issues with appartments crowding out other uses in the inner urban areas. And if we do add another million people to Sydney then what does that enable, in terms of critical mass, that the city doesn't have now? Where's the benefit?
Considering our current cities, my thought is that we'd gain if the population if Adelaide in particular were increased so as to obtain a greater critical mass in that city, which would make it more of a self sustaining economy with less reliance on a few key industries, but that we're not really gaining by adding more people to Sydney or Melbourne.
Smurf said:But if the airport is existing, and then someone builds housing nearby, then that should not result in new restrictions on the airport in my view. Rather, the onus should be on the housing developers to build in a manner compatible with the existing surrounding environment which in this example includes noise from aircraft.
"Alcohol-related assaults have decreased by 42.2 per cent in the CBD since we introduced the 'lock-out laws'," Mike Baird said.
"And they're down by over 60 per cent in Kings Cross."
Mr Baird added that the number of small bars in Sydney has almost doubled in that same period.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore said she understood why some people were frustrated with the lockout laws.
"There are a lot of people in Sydney who like to go out late and they like to go out and socialise and meet their friends and listen to music and dance, and they should be able to," she said.
The Premier said his government would review the laws in coming months.
"But as I've said before, it is going to take a lot for me to change my mind on a policy that is so clearly improving this city," Mr Baird said.
Mike Baird on Facebook said:Let’s start with a statistic about Sydney’s nightlife that matters: alcohol related assaults have decreased by 42.2 per cent in the CBD since we introduced the “lock-out laws”.
And they’re down by over 60 per cent in Kings Cross.
But… didn’t we achieve this by shutting down the whole city and killing its nightlife?
Well, one last statistic: the number of small bars in Sydney has more than doubled in the same time period.
There has been a growing hysteria this week about nightlife in Sydney.
The main complaints seem to be that you can’t drink till dawn any more and you can’t impulse-buy a bottle of white after 10pm.
I understand that this presents an inconvenience. Some say this makes us an international embarrassment.
Except, assaults are down by 42.2 per cent.
And there is nothing embarrassing about that.
From the outset, these laws have been about fixing a serious problem. Violence had spiralled out of control, people were literally being punched to death in the city, and there were city streets too dangerous to stroll down on a Friday night. The community was rightly outraged. I was personally outraged. I met face to face with the families of victims. You don’t need to see that sort of pain too often to realise there is a problem that needs fixing. And the Government was determined to act.
We introduced laws to curb violence and to eliminate drinking ghettos by redistributing the nightlife across the city, making the whole city more vibrant.
Now, some have suggested these laws are really about moralising. They are right. These laws are about the moral obligation we have to protect innocent people from drunken violence.
Doctors right across the city are now telling us that they are seeing far less emergency room presentations on the weekends. Transport workers are telling us that the trains are safer. Small bars and restaurants are opening across Sydney. And residents across the city, particularly women, are telling us they feel safer walking home at night.
At this stage, some of the evidence is anecdotal. But lots of hard data is starting to come in. And it is all telling a similar story.
Over the coming months a detailed review into the effects of the lock-out laws will be undertaken. I await this work with interest. But as I’ve said before, it is going to take a lot for me to change my mind on a policy that is so clearly improving this city.
Now some, who wish to define our city by one street on Kings Cross, make the hysterical claim that Sydney is dead.
They couldn't be more wrong. This is the greatest city in the world and it is now safer and more vibrant than ever.
Long Live Sydney.
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