Re: Is Sydney Really This Bad?
Some other points of ponder.
Let's consider the "lost economy" of the lockout laws that opinions like the OP allude to. These can be loosely grouped into: (a) lost business revenues, (b) lost jobs, and (c) lost economic spend via less customers.
For (c), so some people may go out less because of the lockout laws. What do they do with the money which they are now not spending? Do they save it? Or do they simply spend it somewhere else? If the answer is the latter, then that component of the "lost economy" is not necessarily, well, lost. People who want a good night out will find a way to do it and spend more or less the same amount of money to do so.
For (a) and (b), I think it is quite conceivable to presume that many of the supporters of the lockout laws - or indeed any means possible to reduce the alcohol related violence and general malaise - do not care about the effects on closing businesses or staff who lost their jobs. In fact, there is probably a good reason to believe that many of those supporters blame the existence of such establishments for the uprising and culturing of the adverse alcohol-fuelled culture, so to their minds, those businesses and their staff are rightfully forfeit for the better. On a more general level of presumption, I would harbour a guess that any supporter, from single voter to politician, did not think about nor consider any such "collateral" damage, as the overarching sentiment of reducing alcohol-induced violence, crime and hospital incidents was far more important to consider, i.e. an "whatever it takes" / "any means possible" approach. Of course, it is surprising in some ways that such parties did not then consider more stringent measures that would probably also achieve the same goal, albeit with further limits on liberties, but far easier to implement. For example, firm blanket closing times (10pm, 12am, whatever), heavier restrictions of liquor licences, mandatory detention of drunken belligerents or those who commit assault causing injury / death, etc.
As for the "lost economy" overall, that side hasn't considered the possible economic savings due to less pressure on the support services and others. For example, with less incidents ending up in hospital, there is an overall lessening of pressure on the hospital system, that saves physical resources, improves availability of services for people who are more deserving of that attention, lessens stress on medical staff (leading to better staff productivity and less turnover and stress-induced leave etc.). A similar argument might be put together on the policing resources. The space which is vacated by closed down restaurants and clubs may be taken up by some other business, not necessarily late night entertainment related, but a tenant nonetheless. The new businesses which take those often valuable positions and the staff they bring along with it, combined with new customers, offsets all three components I alluded to. Now I'm not sure to what extent the savings pay off the losses, but it's a point nonetheless, plus that's still combined with the (c) component that people might still spend their money but just somewhere else.
People say this kind of culture renders Sydney a global laughing stock. Except for a few noted comments here or there, I haven't seen too many articles actually mocking Sydney about this kind of "counter-culture". Some may even note that if you were to query the origin of some of the critics, those cities might be considerably more dangerous than Sydney, so "you don't have a leg to stand on making that criticism".
As counter note, there have been reports that lockouts have reduced the number of incidents (by about half, a considerable amount). However, they haven't eliminated the number of incidents. What does this mean from here? Are lockouts the beginning, or are things much better that they can be left as is now? Does this mean lockouts don't actually work, because even if the problems have reduced, they haven't been eliminated? If another person dies due to an alcohol related incident, does this mean lockouts are ineffective, are not stringent enough, or a new / additional strategy is required?
