"This is one of the notorious venues in the city. Every second night there are police cars outside and VCAT, who seem to have taken a holiday at the North Pole over the last year, have said that restricting a 24-hour licence might damage this business. Well good, that's exactly what we want. "We don't want packaged grog being sold to people ... in the city. That's exactly the problem." The venue had fought a move by liquor licensing director Sue Maclellan to shut at 11pm as part of a crackdown on 24-hour bottle shops to curb alcohol-related violence in the city. Owner Harry Chua, who also owns a city backpackers' hostel, claimed his business was "iconic" among international backpackers and would not survive if forced to close early. Cr Doyle said he would speak to Consumer Affairs Minister Tony Robinson today to see whether an appeal against VCAT's decision was possible.

"If we can't push this to its absolute limits then we are not doing the right thing by the city," he said. "I would even look at the quite draconian steps of legislating if that's what the government needed to do. We might have to look at venues like this, restricting their hours of operation or their numbers of patrons. "Courts are meant to represent the people of the community and take some notice of public sentiment and public conversation. I mean, this senior member (of VCAT) seems to have overruled all the police evidence, the finding of a Liquor Licensing Panel, because it might damage the business. That ... to me is just not a reason for it." He was also surprised that VCAT had noted that drinking on the street was legal, he said. "I'm not sure whey we would need to have drinking on the streets and I'm actually quite surprised that it is legal because it was my belief that it was not," he said.

Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe said Victoria Police was disappointed with the decision and that more needed to be done to change the current culture that glorified drunkenness. He conceded that VCAT was just interpreting legislation when handing down its decision but refused to blame the government for failing to introduce tougher anti-booze measures. ‘‘The issue for us is we’re always talking to the government about legislation and we’ll continue to do that and we’ll talk to the government about what we think may be better legislation going forward,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t think....[we should] point the finger at anybody. ‘‘A [police] submission went up...we thought that submission was substantial.

‘‘We have to accept VCAT has had a different view in relation to that.’’ The Exford Hotel has declined to comment