A violence prevention and addiction studies professor has hit back at a One Nation politician who said any review he did of Newcastle's nightlife trial wouldn't be independent due to who asked him to do it.
Deakin University Professor Peter Miller made the comments after NSW One Nation Upper House MP Mark Latham, who chairs a committee overseeing the Newcastle trial to lift lockouts and extend trading, refused a request for Mr Miller to review the trial data.
The request was made by committee member Anthony Cook, who expressed concern a decision on the first stage of the trial from October 2020 to March 2021 was made before the trial ended.
The committee agreed to allow an independent review. Dr Cook then approached Prof Miller and sought a data access agreement from the committee, but was declined. Dr Cook said his committee position was now "untenable" as he doesn't trust that an informed decision will be made.
Mr Latham said the independent review was going ahead, but there was never a plan to allow Dr Cook to choose the reviewer as they "wouldn't be independent".
"We'd be expecting whoever he picks would lean towards his position," Mr Latham said. "I've never even heard of Professor Miller from a bar soap.
"We'll get someone who is independent and get certification of the data and make sure that it's a good report going forward to the state cabinet."
Mr Latham said the reviewer would be chosen at the committee's August meeting.
But Prof Miller said he had conducted the world's five largest studies into licensed venues, and rubbished a suggestion he was biased.
"Nobody's paying me to do anything," he said. "We do this all around the world. It's fascinating to me and it's my expertise. I don't have a vested interest.
"I've made lots of reports that say all sorts of different things about lockouts and last drinks and drinks restrictions. Some of them work, some of them don't.
"We have to go through independent peer review, who are anonymous reviewers. They will rip us apart if the article wouldn't be good enough, if the analysis wasn't up to scratch.
"People like me don't care what the science says, we care that the science is good."
Mr Latham said the committee had received data from the police this week saying Newcastle will have its lowest ever rate of non domestic alcohol related assault this financial year. But this is included COVID lockdown.
Prof Miller said the "basic assumptions" Mr Latham was making "are appallingly bad".
"The nightlife is massively depressed right around the country, right around the world," Prof Miller said.
"Yes, it's coming out now. But to sit there and say something like, 'we've never had lower levels' is an appalling presentation of the real dynamic of what's happening.
"You can't tell if that's real or not. We can do it statistically, if we had the data. What Mr Latham is doing is denying access to all the data that was collected using public funds."
However Mr Latham said Dr Cook and fellow community advocate Tony Brown thought "the sky would fall" as a result of the first trial, but it was successful in increasing nightlife without dire consequences.
"[Newcastle] is the second biggest city in NSW," Mr Latham said. "It will have a night economy, it will have a nightlife, it will have activity. If you want a quiet place to live where you can hear a pin drop, well, the centre of Newcastle is not the place to move into.
"There's a lot of young people who want to go out. People want to enjoy a city life, that are happy to live in the centre of Newcastle and find jobs and activity."
