In this week’s instalment of citizen journalism, Zink Bar and Restaurant proprietor, Christine Stacey, talks about the negative and unforeseen consequences a lockout has had on her home town of Mooloolaba, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
“I have a licensed restaurant on the Sunshine Coast and our lockout is 1:30am. We inherited it when we bought the premises three years ago. But we have a 2:00am license and the lockout crucifies our trade from 1.15am.
But it not only affects us from our business perspective. It also affects the town of Mooloolaba from a noise and people flow one.
The mad rush up and down the beach Esplanade at 1:15am to get to the three operating 3:00am closures is crazy. This is peak sleeping time for our 5000 guests that are in accommodation on the beach at Mooloolaba and it is extremely noisy and volatile at that time.
The local government and councils do not have an efficient transport initiative either, so it is difficult to move the volume of patrons out of town at that time. Lockouts only leave poor stranded patrons out in the street and not being able to get home.
This escalates vandalism as they are perhaps waiting for friends that are inside the nightclubs until 3:00am.
There has been no consultation with licensees by licencing authorities or council regarding this matter, as they believe they are solving alcohol-related problems.
Go for it Melbourne and keep fighting for our industry and its longevity and diversity.”
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