The city is jubilant as Sydney amassed 15,000+ people to protest the lockout laws without anyone dying or throwing a coward punch as Mike Baird would presume.

The unity of Sydney in coming out in numbers has triggered a knee jerk reaction with The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) who’s motto is ‘Stopping harm caused by alcohol’ conducting a questionable poll.

The poll that the Sydney Morning Herald decided to give publicity included 353 people living in NSW conducted in January quotes that 68% of NSW residents support lock outs. The survey also surprisingly said over half (60%) of NSW residents considered the city or centre of town to be unsafe on a Saturday night. (???)

The survey however doesn’t specify

1. A break down of the ages of people who filled out the survey
2. Where in NSW the participants live (I mean if the person is living in Orange, does their opinion matter?)
3. The ratio of males to females in the survey

We’re 100% against the violence caused by alcohol, however, closing venues early doesn’t address the issue (it only damages our night time economy). Let’s take a moment to remember, both coward punches occurred before 10pm. Organisations like FARE need to stop conforming to the government’s band aid solution and help create alternative solutions like;

– Education programs that teach young males how to express themselves with words not violent actions and break down this hyper-masculine idea of what it means to be male in this society.

Archerfish conducted an analysis taking into consideration the reaction from Matt Barrie’s article on Linkedin as well as the reaction to Mike Baird’s post on Facebook. The analysis considers a much larger sample group. 22,314 comments alone in Mike Baird’s post in comparison to the 353 in FARE’s survey.

So where do we go from here?

– You MUST email your opinion to [email protected]
– Leave The Star a review
– Tell Mike Baird he’s out of touch
– Attend Reclaim The Streets on March 19th!