Would the last person in Sydney please turn the lights out?

ONCE the world’s best city, Sydney has now been ruined, says Matt Barrie. The destruction is almost complete.

OPINION

IN 1999, Sydney was at its peak. The Olympic Games were imminent and there was unbridled optimism that Sydney was about to emerge as an international city as the millennium approached.

Internationally, Sydney was renowned as an incredibly fun place to live; the entertainment was world class, with great restaurants and venues to visit at any time of night.

Something pernicious has happened in the 17 years since, and Sydney has not just regressed into a ghost town, but there is an undercurrent of something much more sinister in the way the city is being run.

As I write this in 2016, not a day goes by without the press reporting of yet another bar, club, hotel, restaurant or venue closing.

Walk up Bayswater Rd, Oxford St or the ‘Golden Mile’ in Kings Cross and club after club is closed; not just after 1.30am, but permanently.

A few months ago the perennial Flinders bar in Darlinghurst closed. Then the century-old Exchange Hotel shut down, which held six venues including the Phoenix, live music hall Spectrum, and the upstairs pool hall Q-Bar. Following that, the evergreen Goldfish bar in Kings Cross. Then Soho.

Every week, another venue or restaurant closes. The soul of the city has been destroyed.

Kings Cross, in particular, has been decimated so badly that it will never, ever, come back as an entertainment precinct. Hugo’s Lounge closing, which was the swankiest bar in Sydney for 15 years and voted Australia’s best nightclub five years running, was the final nail in the coffin for the area.

The sad empty building where Hugo’s Lounge once thrived. Picture: Matt Barrie.

The venue also housed the 130-seat Hugo’s Pizza, which had not just won Best Pizza Restaurant in Australia at the Australian Restaurant & Catering Awards, but was also named the World’s Best Pizza in the American Pizza Challenge in New York.

Manager Dave Evans cited revenue falling by 60 per cent due to 36 different “stringent conditions” that had been placed on the business over the past two-and-a-half years. The closing of the venue made 70 staff lose their jobs.

Hungry? Good luck finding a restaurant or vibrant area open late now. Down the road, Jimmy Liks, an up-market and seductively lit Southeast Asian eatery, wine bar and cocktail bar is likewise bust. A sign hangs out the front “Thank you Sydney for an amazing 14 year journey. NSW Lockout Laws cost good people their jobs and decimated a once great and vibrant suburb!”.

After 14 years it’s all over for Sydney institution Jimmy Liks. Picture: David Batch

Even Australia’s staple fast food franchise and destination of choice for hungry late night revellers — McDonald’s on George and Bridge streets in the centre of the city — has, rarely for the global franchise, shut down.

On Saturday nights tumbleweeds blow across the main entertainment precincts for Sydney — Kings Cross, Darlinghurst and Oxford St.

The Late Night Management Areas Research Phase 4 Report, commissioned by the City of Sydney, details the damage done to night-time in economy.

From 2012 to 2015, it was recently reported that Kings Cross foot traffic was down 84 per cent as 42 bars, clubs and small businesses closed as takings fell by 40 per cent or more.

Foot traffic in Oxford St is likewise down 82 per cent. This is already on top of a drop of up to 60 per cent which occurred from 2010 from 2012 as the increasing regulation kicked in.

The total and utter destruction of Sydney’s night-life is almost complete.

A succession of incompetent governments has systematically dismantled the entire night time economy through a constant barrage of rules, regulation and social tinkering.

And oh, how ridiculous these rules have become in Sydney. A special little person has decided that there is a certain time at night when we are all allowed to go out, and there is a certain time that we are allowed into an establishment and a certain time that we are all supposed to be tucked into bed.

There is a certain time we are allowed to buy some drinks, and over the course of the night the amount of drinks we are allowed to buy will change.

The drinks we buy must be in a special cup made of a special material, and that special material will change over the course of the night at certain times.

The cup has to be a certain size. It cannot be too big, because someone might die. Over the course of the night, this special little person will tell you what you can and cannot put into your cup because someone might die.

The laws businesses say are ruining them. Picture: Matt Barrie.

It is now illegal to buy a bottle of wine after 10pm in NSW because not a single one of us is to be trusted with any level of personal responsibility.

Apparently there is an epidemic of people being bashed to death over dinner with a bottle of Marlborough sauvignon blanc that we have all been blissfully unaware of.

Likewise it is now illegal to have a scotch on the rocks after midnight in the City of Sydney because someone might die.

You can drink it if you put some Coca-Cola in it, but you can’t drink it if the Coca-Cola has been mixed previously with it and it’s been put in a can. Because that is an “alcopop” whatever the hell that means.

The only person more confused than me is the bartender. The poor sod is only trying to scrape a few nickels to make it through university; not only are they struggling with their hours being drastically cut back with venues shutting, but the government is now threatening them personally with fines if they break any of the rules.

Oxford St used to be buzzing no matter the time of day. Now it’s a series of boarded up shops covered in ‘For Lease’ signs. Picture: Matt Barrie

Frankly you should be both thankful and lucky the government lets you out after dark at all.

There’s a whole Orwellian nomenclature that has been made up to deliberately keep the general public in a constant state of confusion that some terror has swept across the city: “king hit”, “coward punch”, “alcopop”, “alcohol-related violence”.

Being quite a respectable lot, we’ve all been guilt shamed into thinking that something in the Australian psyche is ugly and that mixed with alcohol we turn into raging brutes, or that by simply having fun somehow we’ve been breaking some great moral code, the 11th commandment: thou shalt not have fun.

But that’s all a load of rubbish and in actual fact, you’ve done nothing wrong at all. In fact you’ve been very well behaved. Sydney ranks more safe than Bordeaux, France or Lausanne, Switzerland for crime.

If the government was truly interested in your safety and not purely on a moralistic crusade, there are plenty of other things that are more dangerous to your health. Did you know that on average an Australian dies every three days in Thailand? You are far more likely to die falling over, out of bed or off a ladder than in anywhere near a licensed venue in Sydney.

It’s also worth noting that two of the biggest beneficiaries of the lockout, the Star City and Barangaroo Casinos, have 24x7 licences and were conveniently left out of the lockout area.

The Sydney lockout area conveniently excludes Star City and Barangaroo.

Sydney used to be a laid back place where we’d welcome the world to come throw a shrimp on the barbie. Now if you do that and someone takes offence to the smoke, the NSW Government will fine you $1100 for the first offence, $2200 for the second and probably put you on a registered barbecue offenders list.

In Sydney, you can’t even have a beer in the sun enjoying a game of lawn bowls anymore without the NSW Government wanting to shut it down. You can’t go for a workout in the park without the government imposing a curfew because 30 or 40 people complain in a city of more than 4.8 million.

Yes, you are living your very own version of Footloose, the iconoclastic 1984 movie starring Kevin Bacon, where a city teenager moves to a small town where rock music and dancing have been banned by a Bible-thumping Minister. Who would have ever thought this could have happened in cosmopolitan Sydney?

Sydney, once the best city in the world, has become an international joke thanks to the NSW Liberal Government.

No wonder everyone’s apparently moving to Melbourne.

Mike Baird has turned Sydney into Detroit.

The historic Flinders Hotel is now boarded up. Picture: Matt Barrie.

PS: This is how Sydney used to look.

This edited story was republished from LinkedIn with permission. Read the full 8000 word essay here.

Matt Barrie is chief executive at Freelancer.com.