What needs to be done is stop blaming alcohol and coming up with radical ideas like 'no shots after 12am'. This does NOTHING. people just drink beer instead or compromise. A better plan would be to introduce harsh laws to punish those who do wrong. Why should those who do the right thing be punished?
Also the trial in newcastle, whilst it seemed to have worked, just meant everyone went to other places than newcastle while the trial was in place. useless
Agreed there and here's another similar example.
Hobart, December 2005. The largest nightclub (indeed the only truly large nightclub in the Hobart) was permanently closed amidst a blaze of controversy and after prolonged conflict with surrounding residents.
What happened? Two things really. Huge queues outside the second largest venue (which is only 40% the size of the one that closed) and a boom in "house parties".
That other club soon earned the unfortunate nickname of "Fight Club" for all the wrong reasons. Trouble inside, trouble outside as well on a constant basis. And the house parties simply moved a modest problem (which wasn't violence - just random acts of drunk behaviour such as minor vandalism, mess in the street, noise and so on) from one large venue and it's immediate surrounds to something that was spread across the suburbs and impossible to control.
Then came the troubles on the Waterfront (main nightlife area in Hobart) which erupted after that large venue nearby (but not on the Watefront itself - a few minutes walk away) was closed. Violence and so on then became the problem.
The other big problem was that other operators tended to adopt a "get in quick" attitude fearing that they too would be shut down (indeed one of them was for a brief period) and that brought even more trouble. If you're going to be closed anyway, then you may as well do everything as cheaply as possible and sell as much booze as you can. And that's exactly what some of them did for a few years (seems to have improved more recently).
In short, shutting down the largest venue in town (and so far as actual nightclubs as such are concerned it represented about 45% of the total capacity of all clubs in Hobart) turned a problem into a bigger one and spread it all over the place. Not what I'd call a success. A few people having sex, throwing up and otherwise making a mess in the back streets of Battery Point was easier to deal with than actual fights at other clubs and problems spread all over the place.
I should point out that Club Surreal was never forced to close as such. It just had conditions imposed (2am closure on Saturday nights, closing at midnight on other nights) which made it unprofitable to continue. And so the owner simply walked away from the business there and then. 8 years later the bottle shop is still trading under different ownership, having been extended into the lower level of the former nightclub, but the rest of it remains an empty building on an inner suburban site (expensive real estate).
Whilst other cities don't generally have such dominance of a single venue, closing all of them early wouldn't work in my opinion. It just moves the problem from a relatively small number of venues that are centralised and sort of controllable to being spread all over the place and impossible to control. It doesn't really work, and of course alcohol sales through bottle shops are already vastly greater than sales at nightclubs so it's only addressing a very minor part of the problem (albeit a highly visible part). If people are going to party until the sun comes up then they're safer in a club than on the streets, in a park etc.
Even if we permanently closed every pub and nightclub in the whole country, that only diverts alcohol sales to the much cheaper alcohol available from bottle shops which already dominate the market. And to the extent that there's trouble, it just moves it from the city or town center to the suburbs or back streets. Less visible perhaps, but not fixed as such.
All that said, I can see earlier closing (say, 1am) might work if the entire alcohol industry was restructured drastically. I'm thinking along the lines of a tax on bottle shop sales, a fairly hefty tax, and using that money to subsidise venues that provide entertainment (live music, DJ's, quiz nights, whatever) to keep them viable. I see a few benefits there. The cheapest booze gets more expensive and it facilitates earlier closing of entertainment type venues without them becoming financially unviable. It would help restore the live music scene too which wouldn't be a bad thing in my opinion. Use the rest of the money to fund extra police resources to deal with the problems to the extent that they still occur.
Whilst no doubt some would object to a surge in prices at bottle shops, to be honest they're a big part of the problem anyway. People get drunk on cheap booze, then turn up in the cities and cause trouble. And whilst I'm not going to defend smoking (I don't smoke), tobacco is a very highly taxed product on health grounds but I've never seen someone decide to bash someone innocent after having a cigarette. People seem reluctant to admit it, but alcohol is doing an awful lot of damage in Australian society these days (and for the record I do drink sometimes, but I don't go and bash someone afterward - getting drunk just makes me sing and dance rather badly
).
Alcohol is, of course, also directly linked to all sorts of health problems other than violence. Depression is one, cancer is another. I'm not suggesting prohibition or ridiculous rates of tax, but I do think that prices at bottle shops (ie the cheap source of booze) could be raised and the money put to worthwhile purposes, maintaining the viability of entertainment without such a high reliance on alcohol sales after midnight being one of them.