In primary school, the right to a safe environment, it
seemed, was always being subordinated at the cost of our civil liberties. This
happened even if the troublemakers were a minority group in the school. We had
the right to play at lunchtime but if we forgot our school hat, that right was
taken away from us. When a Gameboy was stolen, the next day bringing Gameboys
to school was forbidden. The same happened with Tamagotchis, Digimons, Pokemon
cards and on and on.
The enforcement of such ad hoc and reactionary rules where
essentially the entire student body is punished for the misconduct of the
minority of troublemakers seems understandable in this context. Primary school
is after all full of, well, children, and at that age children are still
learning the concept of social responsibility. A further problem is the
numerical advantage of students over teachers, which always makes it harder to
isolate the troublemakers and deal with them separately.
You may take this as an overly ambitious change of gear but
in many ways, I see similarities between the above schoolyard policies and the
types of policies that have been recently proposed to tackle the problem of
alcohol-fuelled violence in Sydney’s Kings Cross.
If you live in Sydney, it was probably impossible for you to
avoid hearing about the death of the 18 year old Tom Kelly on July 7, 2012 in
Kings Cross. If not, you can read a bit about it here,
here
and here.
It was a truly tragic incident that has rightly brought violence and alcoholism
in the notorious nightspot to the forefront of debate.
After four weeks of studying Cities and Citizenship, I’ve begun to see the situation as a contest
between different groups who are each calling for greater protection of their
rights. Each group comes from a different perspective, has different
priorities, different ideologies – and
do not consider the rights of the citizen the same way.
NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell has proposed multiple methods to
tackle the Kings Cross problem. Taken from the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph:
Shots and doubles should be banned in all licensed venues in
Kings Cross on Friday and Saturday nights
- Glassware should be banned every day of the week
- “No more than four drinks would be able to be purchased at any one time after midnight”
- “Wind-down hours” (to “stop serving an hour before closing so patrons do not leave at full tilt”)
- Creating an outreach patrol to assist intoxicated people call ambulances
The motivation behind such policies is presumably supported
by parents groups whose adult age children frequent the area. The rights of the
citizen are most often framed in terms of civil, political, and social so, in
supporting these types of policies, these groups place social rights (here, the
right to public safety) at the top of the scale. In calling for these policies
these groups express their belief that, as citizens of Sydney, they should
first and foremost be able to enjoy the right to public security.
But the proposed policies do come with the drawback of
limiting citizens’ civil freedoms as is reflected in the following Facebook status update:
As a member of the age bracket that generally fills up Kings
Cross’s pubs and clubs every week it may not be surprising that I am on the
side of the writer of this status update but I feel we do have a point. Perhaps
it sounds trivial to those a little more removed, but the “right”, if you will,
to enjoy your Friday or Saturday night the way you usually do is important to
us and we feel aggrieved that that could potentially be interfered with as a
result of actions we did not commit.
Not only does it restrict the civil liberties of the
majority because of the actions of a minority, but the policies seem to be
aimed at treating the symptoms rather than the causes and this curbs their
long-term effectiveness. I feel that regulating the types of drinks available
to patrons at bars and restricting the movement of people, for example, would
only change the methods revellers will use to access alcohol.
I also tend to
agree with the Australians Hotels Association’s CEO Paul Nicolou who said that
“wind-down hours actually create aggression and it loses sight of the fact the
problems are not in our venues, they’re on the streets”.
Essentially, I don’t believe that any of the policies listed
will change the behaviour, habits, or way of thinking of those who frequent
Kings Cross regularly or of the citizens of Sydney generally. Alcoholism is a culture. If it is to be solved, it
itself needs to be changed.
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