Page 4130 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 2010
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undertake to look closely at the weightings given to each factor and reserve the right to disallow the fees if the resulting fees are inappropriate. But the important part here is that we think it is important to have this factor in there. It creates a more rounded assessment of the various risk factors that are identified in the research as being related to alcohol violence related problems. I commend the amendment to the Assembly.
MR CORBELL: (Molonglo-Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (7.10): The government will be supporting this amendment, and I would like to thank Mr Rattenbury for his consideration of the issues I raised with him earlier today in relation to his proposed amendment. I think we have found an effective way through, to address both his concerns and also, primarily, my department’s concerns about some of the administrative issues associated with his previous proposal.
The government will be supporting the amendment. The inclusion of this amendment will ensure that, if a regulation is made dealing with the calculation of fees for the Liquor Act, consideration needs to be given to the history that compliance licensees and permitted premises have with the act. This will be important in the context of the two-year review, when all aspects of the new liquor laws will be examined, including the fees.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (7.11): The Liberal opposition will support the Greens’ amendment. The Greens’ amendment adds to the list of matters that, by regulation, the minister must consider in determining licence and permit fees, and it would enable the minister to consider the history of compliance that the licensee and licensed venues has in the act.
I must say, Madam Assistant Speaker, that while I support this amendment, I think that the previous proposed version of this amendment was better. The amendment the Greens initially intended to put forward would have required the minister to consider as a provision of the act all matters in a range of matters when determining the licence fee. Currently the bill contemplates at clause 223(2)(b) that the minister may make regulations in relation to the determination of fees based on one or more of the matters. The Greens’ previous or draft amendment would have allowed a more robust way of approaching the determination of licence and permit fees than is currently proposed. But, even so, it gives a fairer treatment to licence and permit holders. Importantly, the previous version would have underpinned more securely the Attorney-General’s quest for risk-based fee structure as outlined in his presentation speech.
Nevertheless, I do acknowledge that by keeping the determination method as a matter of regulation and, therefore, disallowable, it does provide another opportunity for close scrutiny—and I do assure the attorney there will be close scrutiny—and consideration of any methods the government might seek to put forward. So, it is with puzzlement about why the Greens would demote the amendment that they initially proposed and that we said that we would support that, however, I am still prepared to support the amendment in its current terms, because I think it does make the process better than it was before.
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