Hotel chiefs push for mandatory jail as pub violence escalates
Violent drunks and repeat gang offenders caught on CCTV have sparked a major crackdown call from South Australian hoteliers, who say they have had enough of being on the frontline of a “suburban crime wave”.
Fronting Premier Peter Malinauskas and Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia at the Australian Hotels Association’s influential Adelaide Christmas lunch on Tuesday, AHA president David Basheer used confronting security vision of pub attacks to lay down a pre-election challenge.
“We are tired of being targeted by the same criminals,” Basheer told the room.
He described one shocking case in which a man assaulted multiple staff, issued death threats and trashed a hotel, but walked away with a suspended sentence.
“The assailant entered the hotel using a Kung Fu-style kick and screamed: ‘There is going to be violence. You are all going to die here today’.
“Place yourself in the shoes of the staff who have just been told: ‘You are all going to die here today’.”
Basheer did not name the venue, but industry veteran Peter Hurley previously wrote to The Advertiser in October, criticising the suspended sentence given to Samuel Ajal for wilful damage and violent assault, saying it “falls well short of community expectations for such serious offences”.
“Despite three hotel employees being assaulted – one of them bitten – and damage to gaming machines exceeding $80,000, Magistrate Davis offered Mr Ajal words of comfort, assuring him he was a “good person” who had done a stupid thing,” Hurley wrote.
There is no suggestion Ajal was involved in gang activity.
Basheer said crime and anti-social behaviour was “having a devastating impact” on venues and staff, stressing that it “hasn’t suddenly occurred overnight” but had “deteriorated over a generation”.
“Most critically, this repeated criminal activity deserves to be met with mandatory jail terms,” he said.
“From our perspective behind the bar and bottle-shop counter, the status quo has failed. We are tired of being targeted by the same criminals.”
He stressed that hoteliers were not criticising police and acknowledged the role of the courts, but argued that “softer sentencing” had “raised understandable questions within the community”.
Basheer also said current liquor restrictions in four regional zones and the Adelaide CBD were expensive, clunky circuit-breakers rather than a genuine long-term fix to the violence.
“There is overwhelming evidence these restrictions merely shift the problem. For example, the Adelaide CBD liquor restrictions have pushed this unsavoury behaviour into the suburbs – where your families live,” he said.
“Our suburban pubs, especially those on major public transport routes, are now being targeted by individuals and gangs. These people are organised and they are dangerous.”
Basheer outlined three key asks from the state’s hotel industry: mandatory jail terms for serious repeat offenders; government co-funding of up to $20,000 for security upgrades and staff training; and a stronger system that puts victims at the centre.
In his address to the lunch, Malinauskas did not directly respond to the crime concerns.
Tarzia reiterated his November election pledge that serious offenders who break bail would go straight to prison under a “one-strike rule”.
Jonathan Jackson, 3rd December 2025
