David Penberthy: It is actually their job, it is Corey Wingard’s job, to fire up on issues such as this and show some leadership
“G’day Corey, two more hold-ups again last night... our staff are feeling scared,” an SA hotelier wrote today. Our pubs, their workers and their patrons, deserve a proper show of support from our Ministers.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Separate armed robberies at Queenstown and Walkerville pubs
- Police warn of robbery crime wave after Mawson Lakes attack
One of our state’s most successful hoteliers wrote the following letter to Police Minister Corey Wingard.
In the style typical of its author, it pulls no punches in describing the level of fear within our hotel industry as it reels from a string of robberies.
“G’day Corey, two more hold-ups again last night. Our staff are feeling scared. Scared of people that are fuelled by illicit drugs.
“I think the community and certainly the people at the coalface would like to see the Minister of Police and the Police Commissioner make a public show of strength and make some undertakings that make us feel safer and less exposed. That something is being done before one of our people lose their life.
“We would also draw some comfort from hearing an expression of concern by yourself, the Commissioner and the Attorney aimed at the pathetically soft treatment the crims get when taken to court.
“This level of violence and criminality is unprecedented in my 45 years in the industry.
“As John Kennedy famously pleaded in a three-quarter-time address to the Hawks. ‘Just DO SOMETHING’.”
Just do something indeed.
The two robberies to which hotelier Peter Hurley refers to in his letter happened overnight on Wednesday at pubs in Walkerville and Queenstown. They take the number of pub robberies this year to 36.
That’s almost one a week. And it is important to stress that many of these aren’t your traditional and clinical stick-ups, where an armed assailant calmly tells the gaming-room staff or bottle shop attendant to empty the till into a bag.
They are erratic crimes, often perpetrated by people who are under the influence of crystal meth. Some have been violent, as the poor fellow who was stabbed in the back during an alleged robbery at the Mawson Lakes Hotel two weeks ago can attest.
There is a tendency in some quarters in this town to turn up our noses at the role pubs play in our community. There is a view, held most fervently by the Nick Xenophon crowd, that pubs are nothing more than pokie-driven profit machines for private owners.
There is also a view among the more abstemious sections of the health lobby that pubs are all care and no responsibility when it comes to alcohol-related problems.
Whatever you think of these two issues, pubs are also a force for social good. They are the venues of choice for family get-togethers, after-work drinks and nights out with friends. They offer (generally) affordable front-bar food for working people, they keep live musicians employed, they sponsor our footy clubs and run fundraisers for the local CFS. They also employ a whole stack of people. People who, right now, are scared witless by what’s going on.
Many of them are people who are on their first job, too.
My sister spent about five years working at one of Peter Hurley’s hotels, starting there as a teenager, like so many other kids across South Australia who first entered the workforce pulling beers or cleaning glasses, where they developed the most important prerequisite for future employment – people skills.
These people deserve a better level of protection than they are getting right now. From the police, from the Government, and particularly from the courts, which have a massive and demonstrated reluctance to enforce the custodial sentences that are on offer for the people who keep the drug trade going – the dealers.
In June of this year there were 11 cases where people were caught dealing drugs – many of them with tens of thousands of dollars worth of ice, and with money bags, scales and strings of text messages confirming they had been dealing, in some cases, for several years.
Of those 11 cases, just one resulted in actual jail time.
It is creating a vicious and useless cycle where as the addicts become more brazen and deranged, the people who keep plying them with this toxic garbage become more ambivalent.
There are often times when a social problem comes along and it’s a misplaced question to ask what the government is doing about it. This is not one of them. Licensing, trading hours and, most importantly, law and order are wholly the preserve of state governments. And on this issue, as Peter Hurley says, we have heard bugger all from the State Government about how it is making this issue a priority.
It is still early days in the life of this government, but my chief criticism of it so far would be its sluggish reaction time on issues of public concern. It is actually their job, it is Corey Wingard’s job, to fire up on issues such as this and show some leadership and demand and deliver new solutions.
And if the courts are so woefully underperforming in terms of public expectations, it’s time for the Government to look at what it can do to force their hands a bit on sentencing questions. The police also need look at resourcing and operations. I go to the pub at least once a month, and I have never seen a cop there playing a security role.
But at the risk of irritating my friends at the SA Police Liquor Branch, I do know they place a high degree of store on responsible service of alcohol issues.
What a warped state of priorities we have before us if we are maintaining the same level of vigilance when it comes to the vexed question of chair numbers or patron headcount in outside drinking areas, with no corresponding increase in police presence when decent people are actually being robbed.
So far it looks like all the really hard work on this question is being done (and funded) by the pubs themselves, with new training programs on dealing with armed robberies, outside security consultants being brought in to assess pub design, extra security staff being hired, and DNA spray installed in gaming and bottle shop areas.
Well, the message to everyone else is clear. Just do something.