Baird Gives Deceptive Stats On Lock Out Laws
By
Year13
The Sydney lock out laws have been a hot topic this week, with a particularly large ruckus stirred yesterday when Mike Baird uploaded this beast of a post onto his Facebook page. It’s well worth the read if you haven’t gone through it already (as are the tirade of abusive comments beneath it).
Read the full post here.
From a quick skim of the comments, you can see the support for Mike is far from widespread, and there are a number of high profile Australian’s who have taken the time to reply to Baird’s post, voicing their opposition to the lock out laws. This includes the one and only Matt Barrie, who’s scathing article about the lock out laws sparked much of the controversy to begin with.
Now, another big dog has gone and put his two cents in, but this time it’s someone who you would expect to have a far more unbiased perspective on the whole situation. NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, has come out kicking, claiming Mike Baird’s statistics are rather misleading.
Weatherburn explained on ABC Radio that alcohol-related assaults had already been declining for about six years before the lock out laws were even introduced, meaning Mike Baird’s statistics from Feb 2014–the year the laws were introduced–were skewed. When this factor is taken into consideration, the statistics paint a very different picture: assaults are down around 45% in Kings Cross (compared to Mike Baird’s alleged 60%) and a mere 20% across the whole CBD (as opposed to the 42.4% Baird claims).
“You can’t really compare before and after if the assaults are already down… What the lockout laws did was accelerate that downward trend so it fell even faster after the lockout laws,” said Weatherburn.
Weatherburn also elaborated on the rumours that since the lockout laws were introduced, violence has increased in areas such as Newtown and Bondi, where the laws aren’t in place. He claimed there had been little to no change in other areas on NSW, even in those suburbs that border the lock out zone, with the exemption of Pyrmont which has seen a slight increase in alcohol-fuelled violence, particularly surrounding the Star Casino.
What both parties fail to mention is the fall in foot traffic, which sits around the 80% mark in CBD areas such as Kings Cross and Oxford St. If there was such a rapid decline in foot traffic, why is this not reflected similarly in the decline in assaults? Could this actually indicate an increase in violence when you take into account the number of people on the streets?
