Page 4110 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 2010
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would consider the local Vietnamese takeaway which possibly only has a BYO licence or may, from time to time, sell a few beers, as the sort of place that the commissioner might consider giving an exemption to. They generally just provide a service to local people who just want a quiet meal and a glass of wine and then go home for a quiet evening.
It is intended to let those restaurants and other smaller venues go about their business as they have always done without any fuss and without any risk to public safety. It is a nonsense for these kinds of venues to be expected to create a RAMP covering all of the elements required under the RAMP provisions, not to mention the very long list of others that will be prescribed by regulations. I think that this would be red tape gone mad. It would be a service to real small business people in this territory if we agreed with this.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. This will allow licensees or commercial permit holders to ask the commissioner to consider an exemption. The commissioner will be guided by essentially what we say here, and the things in amendment No 10 that could be moved later, in relation to whether it would be appropriate. It would be a small number of venues, and it certainly would not be any of the large venues that we are talking about.
The bill currently requires that a RAMP be included with an application and does not provide for any scope or avenue for exemption. The commissioner must be required to assess any exemption application against the harm minimisation and public safety principles set out in the legislation, and the commissioner’s decision would be able to be challenged in the ACAT, if the applicant was not satisfied with the decision. Also, the provisions that I propose to move later, in relation to the advisory board, could also review these things. If they thought that exemptions were being given away too lightly, I am sure that they would bring this to the attention of the ministers.
The provision is really to help small businesses and mainly small suburban restaurants. Unlike the requirements for large entertainment venues, particularly those in the city’s nightspots of Civic, Manuka and Kingston, where it would be axiomatic that a RAMP should be provided, I think that what I am asking the members here today to do is to consider lifting an onerous amount of responsibility from small operators who may only have one or two staff. I commend this measure, which is aimed at cutting red tape for small business, to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.48): As Mrs Dunne has flagged, this is the first of quite a series of amendments, and I will only speak the once to all of them, but I will flag that the Greens will not be supporting this series of amendments. As I alluded to in my remarks in the in-principle phase of the debate, RAMPs will require licensees to identify risks in their venue and prepare plans to address them. As I said, I believe this will focus the mind of the licensee and require them to proactively plan to avoid and mitigate risks.
Now, picking up on the observations Mrs Dunne has just made and, again, the comments I made earlier, I think for some this may prove to be a very simple process and I trust that the commissioner will design the RAMP form or the RAMP requirements in a manner which does reflect this. It may be that some venues have a
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