The State of Play, Pause, Stop: Victoria.

We’ve had a number of requests for Andy Stewart’s editorial from Issue 71 to be reprinted online. The opening column of the issue dealt with the counterintuitive manner by which the Victorian government is dealing with violence in watering holes across Victoria, and indeed, Australia’s other states’ policies to such. With the recent demise of The Tote, we felt it was time to release this text into the wild.

Text: Andy Stewart

It used to be called ‘The Garden State’ back in the day when pubs booked bands (and pokies were banned). A decade or two later, after several inner-city police shooting incidents involving mentally-ill people wielding broom handles and the like, many in Victoria began coining a different phrase – ‘The Police State’ – though this rarely appeared on the number plate. In 2009 the State of Victoria is perhaps now more deserving of another name: ‘The Wowser State’.
Now this might seem a tad ironic given the amount of alcohol-fuelled violence that’s been reported on the streets of Melbourne’s CBD in recent months. If you’re to believe the hype – and for the benefit of everyone who lives beyond the borders of Australia’s most preoccupied state – drunken stabbings, ‘glassings’ and shootings are now a nightly occurrence in some parts of Melbourne’s CBD. Ten years ago you were far more likely to be lacerated by a startled possum or swooped by a magpie than attacked by a drunken numbskull.
Of course, most people in Australia don’t consider wandering around Melbourne’s inner city at 4am, pissed out of their mind, to be entertainment. A few do of course, rocket scientists all of them.

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