- Home
Introduction
Team
We Provide
Contacts
Projects
Publications
Links
- SOL
Bill
---Overview
---Clauses
- Whariki
|
 |
|
- Sale
of Liquor Amendment Bill
Managers
61 Managers to be
on duty at all times [SOL 115]
Supported for all licence
types, including club licences.
Support 115( c)
strengthening the legal responsibility of licensees for
the actions of their managers.
64. Criteria for
manager's certificates.
The requirements for
training are strongly supported.
62, 63, 65, 66 and
67. [SOL 119; 120; 121; 124; 125; 126]
Processes for granting
managers’ certificates. Supported.
68, Relieving
managers. [SOL 128; repeal 129, 130]
Support changes to permit
untrained relieving managers for no more than four days a
month. Related repeal of 69 and 70 supported.
72. Restraining
order
To be repealed. This has
never been used. Instead, the Act is strengthened by
clause 85, new SOL S.165A, making it an offence to breach
the law or licence.
78. Appeals on
High Court against LLA decisions on grounds of
suitability. [SOL 138]
New 1A will include right
of appeal to high court against withdrawal of
accreditation.
Strongly opposed.
- Accreditation is the
delegation of the Authority’ s powers to
a DLA, in exactly the same way as an inspector
also acts on the delegated power of the LLA. This
is the delegated regulatory responsibility of the
state, not a licence to do business. The LLA
and ultimately government remain responsible and
must be able to resume that responsibility.
- If accreditation is
enacted, a DLA gets accredited and it turns out
that it can’t cope or unsatisfactory
decisions appear to be being made, the Authority
must be able to resume responsibility at once,
not have to fight an appeal through the Courts,
which could take years and cost a lot of rate-
and tax-payers money.
- As an administrative
tribunal, the LLA would not in any case undertake
such a fight. Under S.138 appeals against
Authority decisions are in the nature of judicial
review by a higher court. The LLA does
not have a representative present at an appeal
hearing to defend its position - to the surprise
of some public objectors.
Oppose appeal on
licensee suitability, and recommend repeal of 138. This
right of appeal against a specialist court on the key
‘question of fact’ on which it is empowered to
grant a licence is unusually wide, compared with
licensing law in comparable countries (Hill 1997). In
fact 138 allows the high court to ‘hear and receive
further evidence’ on all points of fact that
the Authority may consider. Appeal on questions of law
[SOL S.129] , including whether the decision was
reasonable on the evidence should of course be retained.
- Most comparable Acts
allow appeal only on ‘points of law’,
often to just one level higher and for some
systems this does not take the matter outside the
specialist area of decision making and into civil
law
- This wide
intervention runs counter to current legal
debate, which argues that the higher civil courts
should respect the specialist expertise of the
tribunals and specialists courts established by
Parliament (Taggart 1997)..
- A recent review of
case law under the Sale of Liquor Act 1989
concluded that this wide right of review, on top
of the narrowly defined and inflexible criteria
and licence conditions permitted by the Act, has
contributed to rigidity and lack of
responsiveness in the licensing system that runs
counter to current theories on effective (and
cost-effective) regulation (Hill & Stewart
1998). This would, however, be less of a problem
with the changes proposed in our Recommended
Amendments to the sections on licence criteria
and conditions, since the higher court would
respect this flexibility, rather than reinforce
the current rigidities.
Top | Back | Next | Beginning | Home
|