Page 5697 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010
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In relation to Mrs Dunne’s amendment No 7, the government will not be supporting this amendment. This provision is all about public safety. It is a fact that in larger establishments you need real-time monitoring areas that are outside the line of sight, secluded or lead to toilets. These areas are often the sites of assaults, both sexual and otherwise, and must be monitored. If this provision is removed, then we have taken one step away from harm minimisation.
Additionally, the liquor licensing standard manual already has this requirement for larger premises. However, “large premises” in the current manual is undefined and leads to uncertainty. The commissioner can determine a higher number if 300 people is found to be too low in practice. If that is the issue, I would urge the Assembly not to support this amendment. The regulation has built in the ability to raise the occupancy loading before real-time monitoring is required to be able to ensure that this does not impact on those premises which are smaller. There is no good reason for removing this provision, because it contains the ability to change who the requirement impacts on, and removing the provision will negatively impact on public safety.
In relation to amendment No 8, the government will support this amendment. Whilst I note that this requirement is a current requirement and that many establishments already do this, I can understand how it might be seen as unduly onerous and the government will support its removal.
In relation to amendment No 9, the government will be opposing this amendment. Alcohol sales data are important for a number of reasons. These include that these data are the most accurate estimate of alcohol consumption available, as self-report data from surveys account for only between half and three-quarters of known alcoholic beverage sales. The data will also provide local level data on consumption levels and, very importantly, beverage mix—that is, the proportion that is wine, beer, spirits, mixers, high and low-alcohol beer et cetera. Local level data are crucial for making local policy decisions on matters such as liquor licensing. Although the ABS produces the apparent consumption of alcohol Australia report, this does not aggregate the data to a jurisdictional level.
Finally, these data are able to facilitate studies of the relationships between changes in consumption levels and both population health outcomes and alcohol-related harms—for example, violence. Additionally, the data will enable the ACT to meet the reporting requirements of the national alcohol sales data project as well as obtain a meaningful approximation of actual alcohol consumption in the ACT, which can be used to inform the two-year review of this act.
I would propose to delay the commencement of this provision to give time for industry to prepare systems so that this data is easily retrievable by them. If this was the case, industry would be required to report on sales for the period 1 July next year to 30 June 2012 by the end of July 2012. I believe this allows industry sufficient time to prepare and allows the ACT to obtain useful data and meet national reporting requirements.
Turning now to amendment No 10, the government will support this amendment. Again, this is a current requirement in the current manual and it was uplifted into
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