Page 5597 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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That brings me to my amendment. I move:
Add:
“(3) calls on the Government to:
(a) provide its response to the Committee report within three months; and
(b) if the Assembly is not sitting when the Government provides its response, send the response to the Speaker or, in the absence of the Speaker, to the Deputy Speaker, who is authorised to give directions for its publishing and circulation.”.
My amendment seeks to simply add the element of time to Mrs Dunne’s motion. She has alluded to this already. There is a level of frustration around the late announcement of fees this year, for the second year in a row. The time line Mrs Dunne has set out in the motion is designed to ensure that this examination is done quite quickly so that issues that arise can well and truly be incorporated into next year’s fee structure.
In adding the addition in the amendment I do not want to see a process where it drops off the government’s radar and we end up in a situation next September where we do not have a response, we go into caretaker mode, the fees have to be determined again and suddenly we are in the same situation we are in this year, and were in last year. This year, we ended up with the fees announced three weeks before they were due to be paid; last year it was six weeks. This is unsatisfactory and unfair when it comes to, frankly, creating anxiety and uncertainty which are entirely unnecessary for those that have to pay their fees. That has been unfortunate and it has been unfair.
In that vein, I also indicate that the Greens will be moving to amend the liquor laws to require that any time a minister wants to make a new fee determination—bearing in mind that it does not have to be done every year; acknowledging that, we drafted the amendment in this form—and announce new fees, it must be done three months in advance of the fees taking effect.
I think that is an entirely reasonable requirement. It seems a shame to have to do this; it should be an administrative matter that fees come out in a timely manner. But after two years of experience when they have not, and in a situation where it has got worse this year rather than better compared to the year before, it is timely for the Assembly to move to require the minister to give industry players a decent amount of warning. I foreshadow now that I will be drafting that and looking to bring that into the Assembly at an appropriate opportunity.
While I am on that topic, let me say that I think that 1 December is an odd time to renew fees. It is a very busy time of year for the hospitality industry, particularly those who are running small businesses. I simply offer the thought that the minister, via his department, might consider whether that could be adjusted to some other time of year when the industry is not so busy.
Mr Smyth: 1 March.
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