“Melbourne's Laughing At Us”: Prominent Sydney Club & Bar Owner Calls For 4am Closing

Famed Sydney club/bar owner Justin Hemmes has called for lockouts across the state to be pushed to 4am, days after Premier Mike Baird announced a 30-minute shift back to 2am.

The NSW venue mogul owns almost 70 venues under the Merivale banner, including restaurants, bars and more around Coogee Pavilion, Ivy and Establishment, and speaking with Sydney Morning Herald said the current lockouts are “a serious overreaction”.

"Obviously there were two deaths that triggered this, terrible things to happen and the guys who did it should rot in hell – however neither of them were in venues – they were walking around the streets looking for trouble,” Hemmes told Sydney Morning Herald.

“The city should still be vibrant at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning and in the venues – and that you feel when you go out of the venues you feel safe in the streets."

While there has reportedly been a decrease in violent assaults on the street since the new lockout laws were implemented, Hemmes and anti-lockout activist group Keep Sydney Open are on the same page in saying it comes at the expense of the city’s vibrancy.

"We need a vibrant city, we're an international city and we need a level of vibrancy,” Hemmes said.

“We need to have a respectful and safe community – I think we test certain measures and see how effective they are – but the current ones are detrimental to our city – Melbourne's laughing at us, saying come to Melbourne."

Following a massive protest last weekend, Keep Sydney Open's Tyson Koh said, "Pushing back the lockouts by half an hour will do little to help small businesses, the music scene or reinvigorate our dying inner-city precincts.”