Now that Barangaroo Casino hasn’t worked, can I have my nightlife back?

I’m not sure how libel works on a medium as transitory and flippant as Medium but if discussing James Packer’s relationship to the enforcement of the systematic destruction of Sydney’s institutionalised nightlife over the last five years is anything to go by, I reckon I’m gonna find out.

Sooo, lets take it from the top: ostensibly Sydney’s lockout laws “were introduced by the Government of New South Wales in February 2014 with the objective to reduce alcohol-fuelled violence.” Yah. Ok. According to the 2016 NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics “Almost half of alcohol related non-domestic assault incidents recorded by the NSW Police occur at night between 6pm and midnight.”

Hmm, seems like a pretty strange thing to stop people drinking and entering clubs after the danger zone of alcohol fuelled violence. Except, it doesn’t apply to all clubs. Only those within a certain distance of the city centre that are not within the sovereign power of James Packer’s Crown Casino. Thanks to what is no doubt a sweetheart deal between the NSW government and Packer back in 2014, the casino is allowed to continue completely unhindered until the break of dawn. And anyone balking at such a bold claim should, for a start, check this article that suggests the Barangaroo “ probably rates as one of the fastest assessments of a casino applicant in history,” despite an investigation run at the same time into possible links to international crime figures.

The net effect of these laws then was to essentially to shut down any venues competing with the casino. Which it has done with astonishing effectiveness. John Ibrahim’s King’s Cross empire lies in ruins. The run of clubs that operated along the strip, if not entirely shut down are a shadow of their former glories (I hear World Bar has reopened recently but you won’t catch me going back to Wub Wub Wednesday any time soon.)

Anyway, if you’ve found and opened this article you almost certainly already know all this already. What has been the result of this governmental/big business hand-in-glove partnership? Far from sending a flood of traffic to the casino, most of the traffic has been rerouted to Newtown, previously a trendy inner city hipster locale into what is now a throbbing hub of unwanted nightlife activity. And if, like me your are one of those inner city hipsters, that fucking sucks on a Friday night! If I want to do a bit of late night grocery shopping or visit a local dive or cosy bar I now have to wade through a torrent of obnoxiously fresh faced teenagers, all gussied up on Woodstock and about three hours away from being ready to boot up in the nearest pub urinal. And yes, that makes me sound like an old man and I’m fine with it.

My point is that this hasn’t really worked out too flash for anyone: not the NSW government’s prime Fun Gestapo at time in the form of Mike Baird who was for a period of time probably the most hated man in NSW, not Barangaroo Casino (although admittedly they presumably got some boost in traffic from the nightlife reroute) and certainly not the poor strange folk of Newtown who have to put up with the the ceaseless beating of the tides of wanton youth upon our shores. So can we, like, roll these laws back already? I want to be able to go back to Black Sheep without hearing someone make fun of the giant Elvis Costello poster.