WA extends iconic Sunday session drinking hours from this weekend
AS THE east coast of Australia cracks down on late-night drinking, Western Australia is heading in the opposite direction.
New laws that come into effect this weekend will see trading hours for Sunday sessions — an iconic Perth drinking tradition — extended from 10pm to midnight for pubs and 2am for nightclubs.
It’s part of a slew of new liquor laws in the WA capital, which will also allow bottle shops to open on Sundays and patrons to order alcoholic drinks from small and medium sized restaurants without having to buy food.
The WA government has also passed secondary supply laws, which for the first time will see adults who supply alcohol to minors without parental consent fined $10,000.
WA Racing and Gaming Minister Colin Holt said the decision to extend Sunday session drinking hours was made to accommodate Perth’s evolving seven-day economy and fall in line with “modern community expectations”.
It followed a lengthy review of the state’s Liquor Control Act by a state-commissioned review committee.
“The government’s finally allowed Sunday night trading (until) midnight, so for hotels, pubs, taverns and small bars it’ll mean that we’re actually moved into the 21st century,” Australian Hotels Association chief executive Bradley Woods told the ABC after the recommendations were handed down last year.
“We’re not treating Sunday as this restrictive time period where people have to be in bed by 10.30 at night.”
But the move is in stark contrast to NSW, where the state government enforced tough lockout laws in Sydney hot spots last year, and Queensland, where a parliamentary committee is looking at similar laws across the state.
Australian Drug Foundation chief executive officer John Rogerson told news.com.au the WA government’s decision was “nonsensical”.
He said increased access to alcohol could usher in more alcohol-fuelled assaults, domestic violence, crime, drink driving and emergency department arrivals, and said WA was no less immune to those issues than the rest of Australia.
“I’m very concerned because on the one hand the West Australian government has just enacted secondary supply laws to protect young people against alcohol-related harm and on the other hand they’re doing the opposite by extending trading hours, which we know will increase harm in the community,” he said.
“It’s policy on the run and the challenge for the government is, how are they going to know what the impact of this will be on the community?
“It flies against what is happening right around Australia (with alcohol related issues) and it goes against what the NSW government is doing and what the Queensland government is doing.
“Communities want this issue dealt with. We all know alcohol is part of our lives, even though some people don’t accept that as well as others, but we all know that people don’t want to see harm associated with alcohol in their communities.”
Julia Stafford, executive officer of the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth at Curtin University, told news.com.au the centre didn’t support later hours for Sunday sessions.
“We think this is quite an unfortunate move in WA,” she said.
“There’s lots of evidence that more alcohol leads to more problems. There’s likely to be additional policing costs, and police resources around the country are already stretched dealing with alcohol issues and everything else they have to deal with, so it doesn’t make sense on a lot of levels.”
The new laws, which will apply every Sunday, go far beyond the review committee’s recommendation that Sunday session trading hours be extended only on Sundays that preceded a public holiday Monday.
But Ms Stafford said the centre did welcome the state’s new secondary supply laws, which she said helped parents to protect their underage children from harm.
She also said the centre was now calling on the WA government empower police and licencing regulators to monitor and enforce the laws that restricted the sale of alcohol to minors.
Last year WA’s hospital emergency departments were named among the worse in the nation for alcohol-fuelled presentations on weekends, second only to the Northern Territory, with a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia showing one in five patients were drunk or injured from out-of-control drinking on a sample Saturday night.
Lockout laws in NSW have largely been branded a success, with data from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research have shown assaults in Kings Cross have plummeted by 32 per cent, and 26 per cent in the rest of the CBD, after they were introduced.
Under the laws, 10pm closing times for bottle shops, 1.30am lockouts for pubs and clubs last drinks at 3am are enforced in the trouble hot spots of Kings Cross and the Sydney CBD.
But they’ve also been blamed for venues closing down and for pushing late-night revellers out of once-vibrant inner city nightclub strips and into quieter surrounding areas.
The Queensland government wants to introduce similar laws across its whole state, including a 2am last drinks policy in pubs and clubs.
But the proposed laws may be blocked by three North Queensland MPs — independent Billy Gordon and Katter’s Australian Party’s Shane Knuth and Robbie Katter — who say the restrictions would dampen trade.
Source: News Limited, Lauren McMah, 23rd November 2015
Originally published as: WA extends iconic Sunday session drinking hours from this weekend
