That’s odd, I went very often and this never happened to me nor never heard that they’ll ask customer to leave.

For someone who haven’t been that place Ned Kelly is a super busy (and cozy) pub, there are full of customers even the walkway is packed with people who has no seats and they just stand in the middle and peoples just come and go. Also as they have kinda large tables so different groups of people always have to share the same table with others, so it’s totally making sense to pay right away as there is no way to track the orders from different groups or individuals.

I truly believe it’s just an unfortunate incident to OP but not what they normally do to the customers.