While some lucky venues received a reprieve from the lockout laws recently after a huge Supreme Court decision, those venues have apparently been told by the NSW Government to stick to comply with the lockout laws regardless – despite not being legally required to do so.
As Music Feeds reports, the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing that oversees the lockouts has apparently requested that the venues comply with the 1:30am lockout and 3am curfew regardless of their recently-upheld exemptions, with an OLGR spokesperson claiming that “Most of the relevant venues have indicated they will continue to observe the laws.”
One venue that certainly won’t be complying is The Smoking Panda, which was responsible for bringing about the exemptions to begin with after a hard-fought legal battle.
“We no longer have a lockout and we will be trading from Wednesday through till Saturday 4pm-5am,” the venue posted to its Facebook page.
Music Feeds quote an anonymous Sydney venue operator as saying that the other exempt venues are “afraid” to defy the OLGR for fear of the office “making their lives very difficult”. As of writing, the other venues – including the Oxford Art Factory – have remained silent on the issue.
The Supreme Court recently determined that the secretary of the Justice Department “lacked the authority to subject a city venue to the 1.30am lockout and 3am cease-service laws”, in response to a challenge to the laws brought about by The Smoking Panda, which theoretically opened the doors for it and a handful of others to resume late-night trading.
The venue was originally exempt from the lockouts due to its location within the CBD’s Coronation Hotel, which had been deemed a “tourism accommodation establishment”zone, but that exemption was overruled when the lockouts were put in place.
Now, it would appear that the victory that was won by The Smoking Panda is being claimed by that venue alone.
