It’s the ultimate irony – on the same night the Labor party was voting to stop pub punch-ups, Nationals MP Andrew Fraser was shoving a female colleague on the floor of parliament, fresh from Christmas drinks.
His boss, the aptly named Andrew Stoner, has today been forced to admonish Fraser who has been dumped from shadow cabinet.
What better way to show the Coalition is in the pockets of the beer barons?
Well there is a better one actually: they refused to support last night’s measures aimed at stopping alcohol-fuelled violence in the state’s most violent pubs.
Perhaps they were all in the parliamentary bar, or still at the party Andrew ‘punchy’ Fraser was at earlier – the Christmas drinks of the National Farmers Federation.
What other explanation is there for not supporting laws the community clearly wants?
Laws that will stop publicans at NSW’s most violent blood bars serving shots after midnight or more than four drinks at a time.
Laws so draconian they’ll force the last legal drug dealers to serve drinks in plastic cups rather than the much more dangerous glass after 12 o'clock and stop them letting in punters after 2am.
Now when I tell you the pubs on the blacklist are notorious stoush houses like the Coogee Bay Hotel and Scruffy Murphy’s I’m sure there’ll be no objection.
But of course that hasn’t stopped the poor publicans having a blub to the media.
The boss of the Vegas Hotel in the Cross, Jason Gavin, whined to a Sydney newspaper today that he was scared of his customers reaction to the new laws after the reception they got last night when they came into force.
“They just finished work and weren’t intoxicated… That was the biggest thing – trying to overcome that disgruntled person at the door,” he said.
Now I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen a bouncer who wasn’t positively gleeful at getting to enforce some stupid rule or imagined regulation.
The image of poor over-muscled bouncers with their bottom lips trembling as they look over their bi-focals and read from this latest act of parliament to miffed customers at 3am doesn’t really wash with me.
The pilot scheme in Newcastle has been a roaring success.
And when you consider the way drunk violent morons make some areas of the city no-go areas and how hard we come down on less violent drugs it’s thoroughly reasonable alcohol dealers get their wings clipped.
Only last weekend police were joyously out in force with sniffer dogs at dance party Global Gathering and nailing 50 kids for using recreational drugs which have no impact whatsoever on anyone else.
Anyway, we know from the fact they haven’t been able to land a punch on a beleaguered government, the Coalition are a joke.
Now they’ve proved the other ultimate irony - even though they clearly couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery it hasn’t stopped them being in the pockets of the peddlers of the most damaging drug we’ve got.
