Having served as Mayor of Fremantle for more than a decade, Brad Pettitt knows how difficult, but important, it can be to make entertainment precincts safe.
However, as a Greens MP in Western Australia's upper house, the government's plans to introduce Protected Entertainment Precincts, and ban some people from entering them for up to five years, has left him feeling conflicted.
"The perception of safety is really important for centres like Fremantle and Northbridge, and I really do support moves to do that because we want families to come back into those precincts," he said.
"We want our centres to work, but we've just got to make sure we do this right."
Police handed 'unprecedented powers'
His biggest concern is what will happen when police are given the power to issue people with six-month bans from a range of areas if they believe a person's behaviour is unlawful, antisocial, disorderly, offensive, indecent or threatening.
They will also have to believe that person being in the precinct could cause violence or public disorder or impact the safety of others.
"The extra powers this places in police is actually unprecedented," he said.
"This is what's not being talked about in this state, again and again, is more powers are being put in the hands of a very small number of people.
"[Commissioner] Col Blanch is a good operator but he won't be here forever. We need to have the checks and balances in place.
"The idea that the power for those [orders] sits with just one or two people in the police department, I think, is a very big concern."
Bans won't replace move-on notices
However, the government and Commissioner Blanch have spent the past two days playing down those concerns.
They said the laws would be protected from abuse by the fact that any order would have to be approved by an officer ranked at inspector or above.
Commissioner Blanch also rejected the idea that the orders would be used in place of move-on notices, which ban people from particular areas for 24 hours.
At the moment, about 140 people are handed move-on notices in entertainment precincts each weekend.
"We will still be using the move-on notices, probably far more than the exclusion orders," he said.
"We will save those exclusion orders for those people [who] the police know well, [who] are causing the most trouble."
Commissioner Blanch said it was for that reason he did not think officers would have difficulty identifying who had been banned from areas.
"The [orders] police choose to apply will be done very carefully, under very strict guidelines, and make sure we keep the ones [who] cause the most harm to our community out of those entertainment precincts," he said.
Another of Dr Pettitt's worries was that the proposal was being put forward without proper evidence to back it up.
"It feels a little bit like a populist move rather than one based on evidence around what's the real impact that it's going to have," he said.
'Little evidence' bans reduce violence
Nicholas Taylor is among those who have looked into similar laws, including ones in force in Queensland that allow police to ban people from similar precincts for 10 days.
Research that Dr Taylor conducted at Deakin University found the number of bans issued on one weekend did not significantly affect the number of offences, such as assaults, the following weekend.
"In terms of reducing overall violence in a nightlife precinct, there's very little evidence out there currently, but none of it shows that … banning of individuals from nightlife areas reduces the overall level of violence within them," Dr Taylor said.
Instead, he found, better evidence for measures that cover all patrons, such as limiting how late into the evening venues can sell alcohol, rather than targeting individuals.
"The really effective policies at reducing nightlife violence tend to change the environment," he said.
"So, I think, if the West Australian government is serious about reducing the level of violence in nightlife entertainment precincts, they'll look critically at the role businesses and alcohol retailers have."
Queensland government says bans effective
Racing and Gaming Minister Tony Buti remained steadfast that the Protected Entertainment Precincts will get the job done.
"What we do know is that Queensland has this legislation and, from our investigations, communications with them, they are saying that it's successful," he said.
"In regards to actual data, that is still being processed."
In May, the Queensland government said its efforts to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence, including the 10-day bans, stopping alcohol service at 3am, and introducing mandatory ID scanners, had delivered a 49 per cent drop in the number of serious assaults across the state between 3am and 6am on Friday and Saturday nights.
Dr Buti said that, if people could feel comfortable going out into the entertainment areas, knowing that convicted criminals were banned, the laws would be a success.
