[dicemoose]

`'One-punch'' assaults have cost 90 Australian lives since 2000, most in booze-fuelled bashings, a study has found.` ... `NSW had the highest number of king-hits (28), followed by Victoria and Queensland (24 cases each).`

So not night after night at all, but more than a couple (this article is from 2013.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/90-killed-in-singlepunch-assa...

[SyneRyder]

That's one-punch deaths, but not one-punch assaults. There's even more of those. Tucked away further in the article is a quote that says it is an occurrence every club night:

"St Vincent Hospital's emergency department director, Gordian Fulde, treats four or five ''absolutely obvious'' king-hits while working at the hospital every Friday or Saturday night."

[sydneysider]

Instead of destroying small business and bringing in laws which detrimentally affect everyone, the state government should create examples of the offenders (the idiots that thing its cool to knock someone out), throw the book at them. strengthen the laws in a way that limits the potential for misuse, but sends a strong message to the drunken yobs, "if you do this, you're toast".

These lockout laws don't fix anything, they just move the problem elsewhere, Newtown and Enmore residents are seeing more and more violence at nights now. It's an example of shifty moral knee-jerk-reaction law making, 'lets pass these heavy handed laws that give us more power, but lets frame it in a way that if you oppose it, you can be painted as supporting murders on the streets'.

I completely agree with the author that NSW becoming more and more of a nanny state, i.e: not allowed to have a BBQ (which god forbid, might make a bit of smoke) if you are in a strata property, or that un-named council that has banned kites (probably because a kite could take down a plane), I know restaurant owners who follow the rules and are still terrorized by the prospect of the office of gaming and liquor deciding to shut them down.

Hopefully with Malcolm leading the federal libs now, he will exert some pressure on the NSW libs to wake up and stop sabotaging the NSW economy. Australian politics (and politics in general) are just pathetically depressing.

[kirrent]

They did strengthen the laws. There's some pretty strong mandatory minimums in place now for a wide array of late night violence offences.

[chris_wot]

The media did. There's not much point in making an example out of drunk people, because violent drunk people aren't thinking of the consequences.

The only way of making this work would be a register of offenders who can't go to pubs because of their drunkenness. Given that we tried to have mandatory pre-commitment for gamblers (which allowed them to gamble, but put limits on it) and this utterly failed, I'm not surprised that the government realised that lockout laws were the only way forward.

Incidentally, do you have any facts to back up that lockout laws are "sabotaging" the NSW economy?

As for not BBQ'ing in a Strata property - that's ill-informed. There are currently a set of amendments that hopefully will be enacted by July 2016 that prevent people's smoke from drifting into adjoining properties. The amendments allow a ban order to be made if the tenant makes a nuisance or hazard through their actions. If the tenant doesn't comply, then they get taken to the tribunal, who can then fine them a lot of money.

Don't see what the issue is here. If your cigarette or BBQ smoke is interfering with another tenant, then you should be prevented from doing this.

P.S. Malcolm Turnbull knows better than to interfere with State matters, given he's a Federal politician.

[girvo]

> Incidentally, do you have any facts to back up that lockout laws are "sabotaging" the NSW economy?

Not the economy, but they're killing the nightlife and live music sector. You may not care about that, but I do.

[chris_wot]

That was killed by poker machines.

Though I'm not sure why you actually need to serve alcohol to enjoy live music. As for killing the nightlife sector, if the nightlife sector relies on people drinking copious quantities of alcohol, then it might not be a bad thing. Maybe they should evolve to be less dependent on alcohol.

[rm_-rf_slash]

I would argue that you need to sell alcohol to make the live music profitable.

[sydneysider]

My issue is that we even need laws to deal with this, people can have horrible neighbours (you must remember the fence wars saga), what's to stop your horrible neighbour from making your life painful because you grill up some food once in a while.

[chris_wot]

Please, cry me a river. Of course you need laws to deal with obnoxious people who live in close proximity to you. There are wars over fences, but the law handles that pretty well now.

The thing stopping your horrible neighbour from making your life painful is that they must have evidence of your wrongdoing. If you "grill up some food once in a while" and smoke from your grill goes into their property, then what's to stop them from deliberately doing the same to you?

[vacri]

So you're looking at about 4 deaths a year. To put that in context, in 2012[1] 26 Australians died from falling off a chair and 58 died falling while getting out of bed. The gold standard for these kind of comparisons, lightning strikes, gets 5-10 Australians a year[2].

There is a problem with drinking and violence in Australia, but at the same time, 90 people over 13 years isn't all that many; by itself, it shouldn't be used to argue for new laws.

[1] http://www.news.com.au/national/the-weird-ways-australians-d...

[2] https://www.australiawidefirstaid.com.au/lightning-strikes/

[chris_wot]

Wow, talk about taking the data and misusing it!

There were zero deaths in Kings Cross from falling off a chair, and zero deaths whilst getting out of bed. Similarly, nobody was struck by lightning in Kings Cross either.

In 2012, there were about 20 deaths per 100,000 people attributable to alcohol in NSW. Source is here:

http://www.healthstats.nsw.gov.au/Indicator/beh_alcafdth

[vacri]

What the fuck are you talking about? The 90 deaths mentioned by the parent are Australia-wide, not merely bound to King's Cross. It's entirely appropriate to compare them to other Australia-wide measures. Unless Victoria and Queensland, mentioned in the parent's article, are now located in King's Cross, I guess. Or hey, I can reframe it your way if you like: There were zero deaths from alcohol-fueled king hits whilst getting out of bed.

Also, talking about misusing data, you're claiming that 20 deaths per 100k "attributable to alcohol" is due to violent assault. What a load of shit - the Australian homicide rate (from all sources) is only 1.1/100k. "Attributable to alcohol" basically means diseases - there aren't 4400 (22M/your rate) deaths across the country every year from violent assault, alcohol-related or otherwise. There's not even a tenth that number. Alcohol-deaths-by-violence are a rounding error compared to alcohol-deaths-by-disease.

Look at your own linked graphs sorted by age - do you honestly believe that 65-year-olds are dying from king hits at a rate five times greater than 20-year-olds? That 85-year-olds dying from such violence at nearly twice the rate as those 65-year-olds? Those are some pretty feisty nursing homes.

[chris_wot]

No fool, I'm not. I wasn't aware that the god of lightning was throwing down bolts from the sky to murder innocent civilians. And those dastardly killers committing murder by making people fall out of bed, someone should set up a taskforce, stat! It's diabolical.

Here's a small hint: those laws weren't just introduced due to homicides, but also for assaults.

[vacri]

I was putting the number of deaths into context, not the cause of it. Laws are sledgehammers, not scalpels, and keeping things in context is important. Cyclists die every year from being car-doored, yet we don't seem to be so passionate about fixing that, nor inconveniencing the whole demographic of car drivers because of a few idiots.

As for your last sentence, if you re-read what I said, you'll see "by itself". It was put there there along with "Australia has a problem with drinking and violence" to suggest that you need to argue with more than just what is actually a very few deaths. It's like you wilfully misread me.

As for "no you're not", do you mean you're not claiming that 20/100k are deaths from alcoholic assault? I can't see something else I said you were doing. Then why the hell did you bring it up? Who was talking about long-term effects of alcohol on health?

[chris_wot]

I probably shouldn't have called you a fool. You seem quite angry!