The Queensland Office of Liquor & Gaming Regulation (OLGR) recently released two training videos to help bar staff develop skills in assessing intoxication and refusing service when required to do so by law.
The videos are on YouTube and offer some useful tips, whether for new staff or experienced workers. Licensees may also like to use the videos in staff training sessions or during team meetings.
Previously the Liquor Act prohibited liquor consumption in a car park area without prior approval. The Act did not define a car park; therefore, the conventional definition was used: an area normally used for the parking of cars.
However, the passage of the Tackling Alcohol-Fuelled Violence Legislation Amendment Act 2016 included insertion of a definition of a car park:
car park means an area with a surface designed or adapted for the parking of vehicles, whether or not the area is being used for that purpose.
One interpretation of the definition is that any level outdoor surface could be deemed to be a car park, which would potentially include beer gardens or paved outdoor consumption areas accessible to cars. Although OLGR has assured us that this is not the intent of the legislation, it begs the question of why the definition was written in such a broad sense. Whilst the expanded definition of a car park is a potentially negative outcome, on the positive side there is now a clearer process for any licensee who wishes to use a car park for the service of liquor.
Additionally, approvals will no longer be restricted to a single occasion, the new rules permit an approval for up to three months. This may create opportunities for some licensees which were not previously available, although this comes at a cost: there is a fee payable for each occasion of use and an occasion is limited to no more than three consecutive days.
Therefore, a licensee wishing to use a car park every day for three months would require approval for 30 separate occasions. The 2016/17 approval fee is $65.40 per occasion, which adds up to $1,962 for 90 days.
The changes came into effect on 1 September 2016 and at the date of publication, while some applications for approval have been lodged, we are unaware of any compliance action against licensees regarding the use of car parks under the new definition.
On 1 July 2015 the new QLD Nightclub licence category came into being. On that day any existing subsidiary on-premises licences, with the principal activity of entertainment, or applications for this type of licence, were converted to the new category. Here are four things you need to know about the Nightclub licence.
The licence authorises trade from 10 am to Midnight each day. The new trading hours are not a result of the new licence category, rather they were introduced in the 2008 amendments. Before 1 January 2009 standard trading hours for the old Cabaret licence were 5 pm to 2 am, but some premises were approved to trade from 10 am as a restaurant. When the Cabaret licence was replaced, with the subsidiary on-premises (entertainment) licence, standard trading hours were brought into line with all other licence categories. However, OLGR has only recently acknowledged the standard trading hours apply to all licensees in this category, regardless of what approvals were in place before 2009, and the hours are now endorsed on all licence documents issued to Nightclub licensees.
The principle activity of a Nightclub licence is the provision of live entertainment. But from 10 am to 5 pm the licence authorises the sale of liquor in association with a meal OR while the business meets its principal activity. There are certain rules which apply if a licensee wishes to take advantage of this provision.
Up until 5 pm minors may be on the premises if they are eating a meal or in the company of a responsible adult, but NOT after 5 pm. So, if the venue trades as a restaurant during the day, minors must leave the premises by 5 pm unless the licensee has obtained a customised approval under S155(4)(e).
A notable change for holders of the new Nightclub licence is the substantial increase in the base annual licence fee: $3,388 compared to $626.50 for a Commercial Other licence (the category before 1 July 2015).
Licensed restaurants have been the target of a number of OLGR initiatives over the years, and the most recent change, effective from 1 July 2015, will see the introduction of some of the toughest rules yet. Aimed at any restaurant trading as a bar, licensees will be required to comply with principal activity requirements for each trading day.
What does this mean for restaurant licensees?
Up until the mid-1990s a restaurant, or on premises meals, liquor licence restricted the supply of liquor to in association with a meal and some operators may remember ensuring patrons were intending to dine before serving a drink. However, since then the principal activity, or what used to be the primary purpose, provision of meals prepared, and served to be eaten, on the licensed premises has been used as an assessment of compliance. In effect, if a restaurant could demonstrate it was generally maintaining its principal activity, there was no limit on the amount of liquor that could be sold not in association with a meal.
The upcoming changes, part of the Safe Night Out Legislation Amendment Bill 2014, will tighten things up by requiring restaurant licensees to comply with principal activity requirements on the basis of each trading day. In other words, if a number of patrons attend for a drink and not a meal, there must have been enough dining patrons throughout that one day to ensure that most patrons consumed a meal on premises.
The concerns about these changes are obvious according to Liquor & Gaming Specialists Director Matthew Jones. Licensees will be expected to monitor the number of patrons consuming meals and the number not doing so. How will a busy restaurant owner, who sells numerous coffees and other beverages, ensure that these patrons do not outnumber, or even equate to, the number of patrons consuming meals?
Other changes, which will perhaps affect fewer restaurants, include the winding back of extended trading hours. From July 1, all existing and new restaurants will be limited to 1 am trading, regardless of any current approval. There are whispers that this reduction in available hours will include a reduction in the annual licence fee uplift, but this is yet to be confirmed.
For the more seriously impacted licensees, strategies to mitigate the effects include changing licence types: bar, caf and commercial hotel licences are the likely alternatives. For the rest, it looks like yet another compliance headache.
The lockout laws introduced in Kings Cross in late February this year have been heralded as a success, with numbers of violent assaults dropping by half since the introduction of the laws. The changes in crime rates after adopting similar lockout laws for Newcastle, over a substantially longer period of 5 years, averaged at a 30% reduction in crime. While both of these areas seem to reflect positive changes in behaviour caused, or at least influenced, by restrictions on late-night trading of bars and hotels, the statistics lose much of their effect when viewed alongside the crime rates of other areas in New South Wales. In the same period in the similar-sized cities of Penrith, Wollongong, Sutherland Shire and Gosford, similar or greater reductions in crime rates were recorded, despite the absence of any similar lockout provisions for liquor establishments; suggesting lockouts don’t work as the provisions in Newcastle had little effect in bringing down the rates of violent crimes.
With little demonstrable direct impact on the rates of violent behaviour, the negative effects of the lockout laws may outweigh the supposed benefits that they bring. The economic impact of reduced trading hours is a cause of concern for many business owners and the reduced activity of Sydney’s iconic nightlife precincts threatens the city’s tourism sector.
Further issues with the lockout provisions could be that rather than promoting responsible drinking habits, the restrictions encourage patrons to drink more in a shorter time period, or simply travel to locations unaffected by the legislation. NSW Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch admitted to the ABC that the new rules could “just move the crowds and violence elsewhere” . Peter Miller, Principal Research Fellow at Deakin University, also acknowledged the potential for the implementation of restrictions in some areas to simply move problems to other areas, which may not be as well-equipped to deal with them.
Patrons have regularly been shown to travel across the Queensland border for the increased trading hours offered by northern NSW venues, and Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has already vocalised his ambition to capitalise on NSW’s restrictions, hoping to tempt NSW patrons across the border and turn the Gold Coast into “Australia’s Las Vegas”. Thus while it may appear that crime rates decrease in areas affected by the lockout provisions, it may simply be that the violence has been relocated to another area. Logically, this increased congregation of patrons in an area may lead to increased levels of alcohol-fuelled violence, with crowding at licensed venues identified as a leading propagator of violent activity.
Conversely, decreases in the level of patronage of a given precinct will logically reduce the number of incidents in that area. Statistics on the reduction in patron numbers since the introduction of the lockout in Sydney don’t appear to receive the same attention in the media as those relating to decreases in violent behaviour. The reality appears to be that since the O’Farrell crackdown, crowds have deserted the Cross by up to 30%, with other anecdotal reports depicting the desertion of previously renowned nightlife spots.
Identified instigators and catalysts of alcohol-related violence include diverse factors such as personal biology, type of liquor consumed, characteristic of the licensed premises and surrounds and the culture of the community1. With the lockout provisions focusing on just one of the multitude of factors shown to increase the chances of violent activity, it can only be said that the provisions are a poor attempt to remedy a much larger social problem. A number of owners and managers of licensed venues throughout NSW attribute the general decrease in violent behaviour they have witnessed to their habit of self-policing; adopting strategies ranging from providing free water and food for patrons and limiting the types of drinks they sell after a certain time .
What is needed is not a wide-reaching ban on the sale of liquor, but more targeted attempts to change the behaviour of both managers of licensed venues and “high-risk” patrons. This could be achieved with a mix of increased education and awareness of alcohol-related violence, and incentives for operators of licensed venues to self-regulate and adopt responsible behaviour, with punishment reserved for offenders and for those who do not or cannot sufficiently manage patron violence.
1. Pernanen, K. (1998). Prevention of alcohol-related violence. Contemporary Drug Problems, 25(3), 477–509. https://doi.org/10.1177/009145099802500305^
