Bill to slash Queensland liquor fees
Robbie Katter, the member for Mr Isa, is moving to cut liquor licence fees for rural operators.
He has introduced the Liquor (Rural Hotels Concession) Amendment Bill 2017 into the Queensland parliament.
He introduced the private members bill on March 23 so it’s been a long time in the works. Since the bill’s introduction, there have been public consultations and various stakeholders have been putting in submissions to the Legal Affairs and Community Safety committee.
And then finally last week, the committee recommended the bill be passed. It will now go before parliament for a vote.
Katter is trying to reduce the annual fee for a Queensland hotel licence which now sits at $3600. Katter wants to reduce that by 90 per cent, to $360 for pub operators in rural areas who don’t have the kind of footfall, and therefore turnover, that city pubs have.
In their submissions, the rural operators supported the change, pointing out that pubs play a significant role in rural communities and that reducing the fee would ease the pressure on their bottom line.
They say the fee chews up a significant proportion of their revenue.
The bill makes sense for Steve Burns, owner and operator of Nindigully Pub, located 160 km west of Goondiwindi on the banks of the Moonie River serving a population of just nine people. The closest town is 45 km away.
“We’re paying the exact same fees, and that sucks because my annual turnover is probably what they turn over in a week,” Burns told The Shout.
“And they’ve got poker machines, they’ve got all sorts of stuff. It’s just ridiculous. I just don’t know why they don’t base it on turnover. That way I’d be on the bottom scale, and pubs that are smaller than mine would pay even less.
“We’re doing a million dollars a year, which is big for a country pub. It’s a successful operation because we’ve been here for 15 years and we’ve cranked it up. And then you get these city ones with poker machines that are open until four in the morning. The licence fee is nothing to them. The big hotels look at it and think, ‘$3500 a year? That’s a joke.’ It’s chump change. But for country pubs like us that’s a hell of lot of money.”
by Leon Gettler, October 6th 2017
