SCANNERS SUFFER A ROCKY START
New ID technology a help and a hindrance for clubs
NEW compulsory ID scanning in bars is being praised for reducing assaults and banning troublemakers but panned for big hiccups with foreign IDs not compatible.
Saturday’s launch created a “nightmare” on the Gold Coast where venues reported Canadian, American and Kiwi IDs didn’t scan and had to be manually entered.
Given it was Canada Day and manual entry took three to four minutes, it resulted in frustrated patrons quitting queues.
Despite the issues, police Inspector Rhys Wildman said no sex assaults, three physical assaults and 50 disorder arrests in Queensland’s 15 Safe Night Precincts were “well down” on usual numbers.
Safe Night Precinct venues, including Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach, open after midnight must scan IDs from 10pm or risk a $1219 fine per patron. The scanners, costing more than $100 a week, are linked to a statewide database red flagging anyone with a court or police ordered bar ban.
Melbas nightclub boss Simon King, calling it a “good thing” overall, said its implementation seemed rushed.
His venue had 150 Canadians requiring manual inputting, compounded by Melbas’ external toilet which meant anyone taking a leak had to be rescanned.
“It was a bit of an operational nightmare,” Mr King said. “We had a few leaving the line because it was taking too long. Stamps are useless now because if you leave you have to scanned back in.”
On top of three new scanners and more security required, Melbas would spend several hundred thousand on renovations for an internal toilet, he said.
Almost 90,000 IDs were scanned across Queensland with police revealing of seven people red flagged, four were in Surfers. Two with bans tried to enter venues in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley and one tried in Rockhampton.
Police dished out 35 new bar bans to people across Queensland including four in Broadbeach.
Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath thanked venues for embracing it and said while early days the immediate drop in assaults and arrests was “satisfying”.