Page 5079 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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is quite willing to make it available. Indeed, with the requests that it has already received in this regard, it has provided that information to licensees. The ORS remains available and indeed is stressing at every point that, if licensees have questions, there are people at the ORS who can assist, and they simply need to contact the ORS for that further advice and assistance. I would simply draw that information to the attention of members, and I reject absolutely any suggestion that we are not attempting to do everything feasible to advise licensees of their new obligations under the act.
In relation to this bill, it makes a number of consequential amendments and puts in place a range of transitional arrangements to facilitate the transition from the old to the new liquor licensing framework. The new act is planned to commence on 1 December, but commencement of some of its provisions needs to be phased in. For example, the responsible service of alcohol, or RSA, provisions have been delayed for six months to give the training sector sufficient time to develop appropriate responsible service of alcohol courses and have them approved by the Commissioner for Fair Trading. The new offences dealing with the supply of liquor without an RSA certificate have also been delayed for 12 months to give people working in the liquor industry sufficient time to enrol with a registered training organisation and undertake the relevant course.
Turning to a range of the amendments made to the Liquor Act 2010 by this bill, a number of amendments have been made to clarify and remove uncertainty about the operation of a number of provisions in the act. Section 25 has been amended to make it clear that only licensees who sell liquor for consumption on the premises will need to complete a risk assessment management plan, or RAMP. The sole purpose of the RAMP is to inform the commissioner about how licensees intend to manage and mitigate the risks associated with the consumption of liquor at the venue. Off licensees who sell liquor from bottle shops or supermarkets will not have to complete a RAMP, because their customers cannot consume the liquor they purchase on the premises.
Section 39 clarifies for licensees that forms must be used if approved by the commissioner and fees are payable if determined under the act. During the debate on the Liquor Act itself, there was some discussion about when the suitability information about premises in section 78 would need to be considered by the commissioner. I would like to foreshadow that the government is moving amendments to this section to clarify the circumstances when the commissioner must consider the suitability of premises for a liquor licence or permit.
Also, to protect the privacy of crowd controllers from retaliation when issuing a receipt for seized false identification documents, the amendment to section 124 will require them to only provide their unique identifying number rather than their name.
I will also be making three other government amendments in respect of these issues. Sections 125 and 126 clarify that the offences they contain only apply to permitted premises which have a public area with a determined occupancy loading since not all permitted premises have an area with an occupancy loading.
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