I like pubs. I am drawn to their architecture inside and out, to their character, their patina and the paraphernalia of the bar itself. And when I'm having a beer in a pub I relax more than I could under a tree in a park or, heaven forbid, in a club! I don't like clubs at all, and that goes for their architecture inside and out, their cavernous emptiness and their lack of character and patina.
But I don't like all pubs. I don't stay in a pub that has drunks in the bar, and if that is a measure of the publican's responsibility I'd prefer to drink somewhere else anyway. And given the drunks' potential for violence or damage in the pub itself, let alone outside the pub, I can't understand why any publican would want drunks on the premises, law or no law.
There is the uncertainty as to what amounts to intoxication, although I remember a licensing sergeant saying to me a couple of years ago that it was not rocket science. There was no uncertainty, though, in a patron's intoxication that saw the publican of the Mary Ellen Hotel at Merewether fined $2000 in Newcastle Local Court this week. Police told the court that the drinker kept falling asleep, had trouble standing, took a sip of beer then vomited down the inside of his shirt, then left the pub to vomit outside. He'd had, he said, six or seven schooners at the hotel and a couple of big bottles of beer before he'd arrived.
I'm inclined to believe that had the publican seen this fellow in this state he'd have done something about it immediately, but if that something is putting him out on the street it is creating a bigger problem. It was, by the way, the publican's second such offence in little more than a year.
It is fair to expect that a publican or his representative makes it his or her business to cast a practised eye over patrons, but the bigger problem here, I say, is that the drunk had continued to get schooners of beer when his intoxication would have been far from uncertain.
Sure, on a busy night a publican depends to a great degree on the judgement of staff, but their training could be seen as the publican's responsibility.
But what of the Mary Ellen drinker? If it nis an offence for a publican to have an intoxicated person on the premises, should it not be an offence to be an intoxicated person on licensed premises? Intoxication is no defence against any charge. Should there be more personal responsibility, and if there is should that reduce the publican's responsibility to the individual and the community?
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