Page 5693 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010
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Valentine’s, petrol discounts with liquor purchases and promotions of food recipes with wine suggestions. I hope that the government could see that this provision causes unintended consequences. We certainly did.
I hope also that the government will see and understand the unintended consequences of the requirement that a key must not be required when accessing off-premises toilets. My amendments numbered 5, 6 and 12 together recognise that some restaurants and cafes do not have on-premises toilet facilities because they are part of a unit plan building, for example an office building. There are many buildings like that that have restaurants on their ground floor. There are some within walking distance of the Assembly.
Sometimes the building owner will require that the common-area toilets be locked for security reasons and it is for this reason that a key would be required for access to the toilet facilities. The problem is that at the moment there are a range of restaurateurs which have to provide you with a key because of the constraints of the unit plan in which they are operating and, if they do that, they are in breach of the Liquor Act. I think that that is unacceptable. It would seem unreasonable to force building owners in these circumstances to compromise their building security arrangements by leaving the toilet open. The sixth amendment actually deals with the instance of a restaurant or a cafe that is in a unit plan.
The seventh amendment removes the requirement for a staff member to monitor the electronic surveillance of pathways to external toilets. This is an onerous provision which will add considerably to the cost of running a business. When premises have 300 people attending, the traffic volume along the pathway to external toilets is likely to be relatively heavy. Any antisocial behaviour would quickly come to the attention of staff. It is unlikely that staff would arrive at the scene any earlier than would be the case if equipment was monitored constantly. Further, most electronic surveillance is recorded and can be viewed at a later time for purposes of evidence gathering.
I contend this is heavy handed, unnecessary and expensive. It is an unfair and unreasonable impost on business. The explanatory statement offers no justification for it. The issue here is that the ACT government does not require constant monitoring all the time of its own CCTV equipment but if a licensed premises has an occupancy loading of more than 300 there has to be staff dedicated to monitoring for all of the opening hours. It is not what we ask the police to do and I do not think it is reasonable that we should ask licensees to do it.
Amendment No 8 addresses the requirement for a duty manager’s name to be displayed at the premises. The effect is to substitute that requirement with one that requires the name of the licensee to be displayed. The practical issue of the manager’s name being displayed is that the manager could change frequently, sometimes without notice and sometimes even urgently. Accidental non-compliance would be the result. In addition, it would create the same sorts of personal security problems for the manager as was discussed and fixed in relation to giving receipts when identifying documentation which is seized, which we did in the consequential amendments to the principal act.
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