Page 1544 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 17 May 1994
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Food Licences
MR STEVENSON: My question is directed to Mr Connolly. It concerns the recent requirement for businesses involved in food preparation and sale to have a food licence. Obviously, hoteliers are required to be licensed and also required to supply food. Quite involved health regulations cover hotels, restaurants and other organisations involved in the preparation and sale of food. Could this idea of food licences be reviewed, particularly for hoteliers - who are already licensed and already required by law to provide food - but for other organisations as well?
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Stevenson raises a quite sensible question, and that is whether we can avoid bureaucratic duplication where a person has to meet two sets of regulations. That is something that I am, in general, sympathetic to. I have met recently with the AHA, which raised this exact point. I said that I would look into it, but there are some differences. The licensing laws under which hotels are inspected by the liquor control authorities are basically laws about public safety and public order. The main criteria for inspecting premises are all about ensuring public safety, ensuring responsible drinking, ensuring adequate space so that we do not have overcrowding, and encouraging the serving of food with liquor, because if people eat when they drink they are less likely to get themselves roaring drunk.
The food inspection legislation, which is part of what is pretty much now a national uniform regime for food inspections, is all about public health, as opposed to public safety. In past weeks I have had occasion to raise some questions with the food inspectors in Health about certain premises in respect of which I have had some complaints from business proprietors about heavy-handed regulation. I must say that the reports I have seen, which refer to salmonella and other matters, would make one's hair stand on end and, indeed, if one had just had lunch, would probably have other rather drastic effects.
It is clear that there is a need in the community to have food inspectors to ensure that the food we consume - whether it is in a takeaway, at a restaurant or at a pub - is of a fit standard, that kitchens are clean and free of vermin, and that fresh meat and not putrescent meat is being sold. So there is a need for public health control from Health and public safety control from liquor licensing; but I have said to the AHA that, if there is any way we can make the two interlink a little bit better, that would be sensible. The silly situation applied where the building code said that you had to have a certain area of toilet space and the liquor authority said that you had to have a different area of toilet space, and I have agreed with the AHA that that is silly. We can mould those into one regulation. But there is an important issue of principle about public health regulation, which is food regulation, and public safety regulation, which is liquor licensing regulation.
MR STEVENSON: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. As there are already existing health regulations, what additional safeguards would there be for health under the food licensing Act?
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