WADE GIBLETT lines up outside the Empire Hotel. He is sober but is refused entry. So is his friend. It is three minutes past 2am and the new lockout laws are being enforced.

The bouncer tells him to go up Darlinghurst Road to the Bourbon and Beefsteak, where there is no restriction on trade. Business there is up 20 per cent since the state's tough new liquor rules took hold last month.

"I f---ing hate these laws," Mr Giblett said. "Now I have to go up to the Bourbon or back to Show Girls."

Three Kings Cross bars have had their licences restricted in the crackdown aimed at reducing violence at 48 NSW venues. As well as the 2am lockout, after midnight bars must stop serving for 10 minutes every hour and use only plastic glasses.

"The new act is not really working," said Jason Gavin, the chief executive of the Landmark Leisure Group, which owns two of the affected pubs.

"All it has done is force people from a controlled environment, being the hotel, into an uncontrolled environment that is the street."

At the Vegas Hotel, one of the Kings Cross venues affected by the laws, there is less security and fewer staff.

Five bar workers have been laid off since the lockouts started hurting business. Two more have resigned after being abused during the 10-minute alcohol-free periods. Security shifts have been cut by 40 hours.

According to the police reports that led to the Vegas becoming a "declared premises" - obtained by theHerald under freedom of information laws - only seven of the 23 assaults attributed to the venue took place on the premises. They included a woman who was assaulted in Kellett Street and had hotel staff call police.

Across town, at the "declared" Oxford Hotel on Taylor Square, only five of the 27 reported assaults happened on the premises. The figure includes a fight that began across the road and the robbery of a homeless man in a nearby toilet block.

"The figures are so flawed and I don't think they could use these figures again," Mr Gavin said.

"It's simply not working. The thought process wasn't there; the discussion with the industry wasn't there. It was a political decision made to show they were doing something about binge drinking."

The Australian Hotels Association calls the isolated lockouts a "competitive disadvantage". But it will not endorse a blanket system.

"We don't need short-term fixes for the summer," said the association's national chief executive, Bill Healey. "This solution hasn't been evidence-based, and unfortunately it might have undermined relationships in the future."

The State Government was quick to modify the Liquor Act last year, hoping to have the new laws in place before the summer drinking season. The Government could not supply evidence the laws were working, but said analysis of the scheme would include monitoring of "spillover" venues.

"I'm sure some venues are finding our new laws tough," said the acting Minister for Gaming and Racing, Paul Lynch. "But it's nowhere near as tough as life becomes for victims of glassings or violence that occurs all too often when people drink to excess."

Victoria tried a similar lockout scheme last June but discontinued it after three months. The research into its effectiveness was inconclusive.

Even the Australian National Council on Drugs, established by the Howard government as an advisory panel, says isolated lockouts would have a "minimal effect" but that they were a step in the right direction.

"Where it has worked well has been in regional towns where all the licensed venues participated," said the council's executive director, Gino Vumbaca. "You just can't go out and get drunker and drunker."

The northern end of Oxford Street is marked out by Schedule 4 of the NSW Liquor Act as the most violent drinking strip in the state.

"They're twice as likely to get in a fight," a security guard at the ARQ nightclub said of the people locked out on the street. "And it's made our job twice as hard, too."

The Exchange Hotel reported 24 assaults in the past financial year. Since December 1, business has fallen at least 30 per cent. Security has been cut by 40 per cent to compensate. Laws that were intended to reduce violence mean staff cannot leave the front door to break up a fight on the second floor.

"I don't think we can sustain it much longer," said the licensee, Darren Hickey.

"And it's not fair; it's not ethical. We have to lock people out and they're just walking up to another venue."