Page 5077 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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Members may recall that earlier this year I brought on a motion during private members’ business about the need to move forward on liquor reform. One of the things we particularly addressed in that was the importance of a strong education campaign for both licensees and staff but also for the community because, in order to ensure that many of the good reforms in this legislation have as much impact as we desire, we need people to know about them, to understand them and to have been brought along with those changes, rather than simply find themselves perhaps being bailed up by one of the 10 new late-night police officers and being told they were doing something that a few months ago was legal and now is illegal. So I think there is some real work to be done there to promote these changes to the law and to keep the licence holders up to date.
I read with interest the letter that Mrs Dunne tabled in question time today regarding licence fees. I guess I was a little underwhelmed by the quality of the communication. I would like to think we can do a whole lot better. I am really conscious of some of the people that are the target audience. I have met some of the owners of the rather smaller establishments. These are often the owner-operators of small pubs and places that do not seat many people. They are in the suburbs. Perhaps they are not the high-profile venues. They are working pretty damn hard to keep their venues afloat and do not have time to sit around necessarily perusing the internet for the significant changes to the law.
Even in some of the larger venues I have been to, the owners of these venues have a day job and run these businesses as an investment. I think we need to be really mindful of communicating in a way that is as effective as possible for the people that we are targeting.
The last thing I wanted to comment on at the in-principle stage was the observations Mrs Dunne made about the circulation of the amendments. I am concerned. I look forward to possible clarification from the minister when he gets up to speak in a moment. I do not think that is a very satisfactory situation if it is as Mrs Dunne described it.
I certainly find the Greens in an awkward position. I do not believe it is our responsibility to circulate to other groups other people’s amendments. I think that it is the prerogative of those who draft the amendments to circulate them and I do not want to be in a position where we are expected to do it because it is not our choice as to when it happens. So I am concerned that, if that is the case, it is not a very good way to do business in this chamber and I look forward to the minister’s clarification on why those circumstances evolved as they did.
But the Greens will be supporting this bill in principle. As I said, we certainly will also be supporting quite a few of the amendments as we work through them because I think, as a package, both the bill and the amendments provide some important tidy-ups that progress this legislation in a positive way.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and
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