So, after nearly 30 years as a live music venue, The Tote in Collingwood, is closing its doors. The reason given by the licensee is that, after huge new licence fees have been imposed, he simply can’t afford to run the business anymore.

I didn’t go there all that often, but I’ve been leaning on speaker stacks since I was about fifteen, and I’m pissed off. Twenty-odd years of pokies have done so much damage to the live music scene in Melbourne, and now we are suffering the consequences of our “ban something, fine someone” incompetent, publicity-seeking State Government and their weak-willed Director of Liquor Licensing, Sue McLellan.

In the wake of all the alcohol-fuelled violence that’s gained our beloved BrownTown so much opprobrium lately, the only solution (apart from finally putting a few extra coppers on the street – more on that later) appears to be to hit the soft targets. They won’t take action against the real trouble spots with 24 hour licenses (Casino and surrounds, anyone?), or the tart-fuel barns with 3 to 5am licenses, because poor hard-done-by ALH and Crown Consortium will sook. So they impose across-the board licence fee increases, based on their definition of “high risk” according to the Liquor Control Reform Act, and then proudly spout off about how much action they are taking against drunken thugs.

High Risk doesn’t actually mean “problem venue”. It means a venue, any venue, that’s open past 11pm and/or has amplified (louder than background) music or entertainment. So, under the new scale of licensing fees, this is what happens: my local wine bar, on a tiny little Elwood shopping strip, with a capacity of twenty-six patrons, is open til one am on Friday and Saturday nights; it is therefore designated “high risk”. QBH, which we know so well from the various deaths and serious assaults, is open til 3am and beyond most nights, and has a capacity of nearly a thousand. It’s also “high risk”. There is no grey area, “high risk” is “high risk”. My local has never had a fight, let alone a death, but they’re both considered to have the same level of risk. So my local is now paying about $2600 p.a, and the QBH is paying about $6000 p.a. When you think about turnover (tens of millions vs less than $500K) let alone the amount of police attention, this is not equitable.

A few months ago QBH copped a much-publicised reduction in patron numbers, but what else has been done to alleviate the alcohol-fuelled violence on our streets? Police Commissioners got together recently and de-resourced their suburbs for a few nights in order to put hundreds of extra uniforms in the city. This however, was as much a co-ordinated action to guilt-trip their respective State Governments into extra funding and resources, as it was to clean up the streets.

Which brings me to the role of police in all this. Like all big organizations, they’re ruled by statistics, and, as we all know, statistics don’t necessarily translate into anything meaningful. Licensing issues are in the media so they are now priority, and the police have to show LLV and the government that they’re doing something, so suddenly “walk-throughs”, spot checks and infringement notices are up. Trouble is, current laws prevent them from doing anything meaningful (like on-the-spot closing for bars in breach of the law), so they ping the small venues for having too many patrons drinking outside, or being open half an hour late.

This is not laziness on the part of the police, it’s just an acceptance that the big venues are owned by large companies that own many other venues and have the depth of pocket to fight every ticket and every licence variation or “show cause” application through the Magistrates’, County and Supreme Courts, and VCAT. My local and the dozens of other small venues, don’t, and can’t.

And why were the police out on the streets picking up the drunks? Why weren’t they in the venues where the drunks were getting drunk in the first place? It’s an offence in Victoria to suffer a drunk on premises, or to serve an intoxicated person. But that takes time, to get the manager’s details, contact details for the nominee or licensee, and follow-up interviews, and then eighteen months traipsing through the courts.

Until police are able to walk into a venue and say “right, there’s fifteen drunks, and we’ve observed you serving over a dozen intoxicated patrons, turn the lights up, everybody out, you’re shut for 48 hours as of now”, the barns will continue to pour alcohol down the throats of already-pissed patrons, push them out onto the street and wash their hands of it.

And small independent venues will continue to be the only targets the police can hit, our live music scene will continue its inexorable slide into non-existence, the media will continue to wail and wring their hands over the state of Melbourne streets and the state government will continue to do vast amounts of nothing about it.

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