Scott Leach, National and NSW President of the AHA

OPINION

By Scott Leach, National and NSW President of the Australian Hotels Association.

Here’s an interesting fact you won’t have read about recently.

After publicans in Newtown voluntarily came up with and adopted a raft of measures in September 2015, incidents of non-domestic assault in Newtown have fallen by 10.6 per cent.
During the same trial period – again thanks to these measures – incidents of non-domestic assault occurring in Newtown’s licensed premises fell by an astonishing 51.8 per cent – or more than halved.

Surprised?

You should be given the latest release of yet another lot of figures on the Kings Cross/Sydney CBD lockouts by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR).

In that set of figures BOCSAR argued assaults in a range of areas surrounding the lockout zone – grouped together and called the “distal displacement area” (but more commonly known to you and me as Newtown, Double Bay, Bondi and Coogee) had gone up about 17 per cent since the lockouts came into effect.

All of the geographically different entertainment precincts were lumped in together – individual breakdowns for the suburbs were not included.

The success of the publicans of Newtown, the police of Newtown and the community of Newtown over more than a year was ignored – it was as if it didn’t even happen as the BOCSAR figures were quoted verbatim in the press, on radio and on TV.

Read more here.

This story first appeared in The Shout.

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