What laws give a bouncer the right to evict somebody from a night club in Australia?

Question

What set of laws give a bouncer / security guard / crowd controller the right to evict a person from a night club in Australia? if not all Australia then Victoria.

Answer 1

The bouncer is employed (or (sub)contracted) by the owner/lessee of premises - someone with the right to evict persons from their private property per the common law rights to exclusive use of one's property.

When the bouncer evicts you, they are exercising this right on behalf of and as the agent for the owner, who could do it, but instead has assigned limited agency to the bouncer to do that for them.

Entrance to (and remaining on) a property may be authorised and revoked at any time - at the time that consent is not given or is withdrawn, you become a trespasser and the police may be called upon to forcibly remove you from the premises.

For example, I can have a party at my house, but if I don't like someone, I'm entitled to ask them to leave. I could also ask a friend to ask that person to leave, if I didn't want to do it myself.

Note that bouncers aren't empowered to physically evict anyone except for the general right to use reasonable and proportionate force. For instance, someone that was just standing around in the nightclub probably couldn't be physically thrown out, but someone who was causing harm to themselves or others could be restrained or repelled as appropriate (and if restrained, you'd need to be very careful to do so in the course of effecting a citizen's arrest, otherwise you'd probably be committing false imprisonment).

There may be statutory provisions that bestow additional rights and responsibilities upon bouncers, but this is the basic premise. I'm fairly certain that this would apply in all Australian jurisdictions; probably in all common law jurisdictions.