I lament time past.

Sydney, the vibrant cosmopolitan metropolis, bordered by national park and bisected by blue harbour has grown into a sad afterlife, a husk of its former reality.

With drunken louts aplenty across the English speaking world, the fumbling and collapsing into gutters an all too regular sight. The solution to deal with it and the ‘violence’ associated with drunken rabble rousers that the NSW government adopted, is anything but.

When Dorothy McKeller penned her poem synonymous with the Australian bush I dare think she dreamt that the drought she was referring to would be one that kicked in at 10pm each night in a spin-cycle of punitive reactionism.

The suite of legislative restrictions that plunged my suburb, Kings Cross, into depression wasn’t just an onslaught on the freedoms of previously law abiding Samaritans, it criminalised a litany of previously legal anabolic steroids, it introduced compulsory ID scanners, banned the sale of alcohol from Broken Hill to Byron and Albury to Tweed after 10pm. It banned shots at a certain time of the night, people from licences venues at another, and people from the streets of the CBD at a time after that.

This legislative instrument sought to dull Sydney’s entertainment precinct alls while ensuring that the casinos at Pyrmont and gaming rooms at Barangaroo remain untouched by the puritanical glove of interventionist government.

Short of lurching into the throws of libertarianism, the NSW Liberal state government, with the frequently passive resistance of the NSW Labor party, may I add, wholeheartedly gazetted a moralistic affront on freedom of choice unheard of outside Brunei or Riyadh. Alcohol is now easier to consume in Islamic nations than it is in a Katoomba front room at 11pm.

An idea that feels like it was crafted using the winning response to a round of Cards against Humanity, the NSW government has plunged their usually pro-small-business policy focus into an evangelically charged cryogenic chamber. Yet I fear that only the severed head of a long dead cartoonist would be able to decode the merit hidden deep in the garbled insanity that this legislative legacy sought to bring.

I have had a chance to ask about the sentiments of former Premier O’Farrell on this topic, he told me he was proud of his legacy, I suspect this isn’t a feeling that either of his teenage boys would share as a positive story of their father’s political legacy then again, given the receipt of a bottle of wine brought about the ultimate undoing of their father perhaps they would look favourably on outright prohibition after dark.

I miss the character of my home, I miss exploring the businesses at the top of my streets with friends, teapot-fuelled of course. I miss, dare I say it, the market non-intervention that is synonymous with conservative governments the world over.

I miss the lucky country, will the last resident please turn out the lights.

I will be submitting this post to the deputy Premier’s inquiry into the “Lockout, shutdown and go away” laws that passed when Premier O’Farrell was at the helm. You can write a submission, long or short, too: [email protected]