Perth café fined $5k for breaching 20-pas venue cap
A café in the Perth suburb of Victoria Park has been hit with a $5000 fine for breaching Covid-19 dining restrictions.
Catalano's Café is the first café to be fined under the new social distancing rules when officers found 28 patrons inside the venue, in breach of the 20-pax limit.
The police had given two verbal warnings to co-owner Joe Murgia before returning on May 22 to find eight people over the limit.
While Murgia did not dispute the breach, he described the actions of the officers as akin to the “Gestapo”.
“If I was back in 1939, I would think the Gestapo had arrived,” he told The West Australian.
He said three people were waiting for their takeaway meals, while other patrons were in the process of leaving.
“Given it was the first week, I would have thought some tolerance would be acceptable so businesses and staff could bed down their system under the new rules,” he said.
Murgia said the business had struggled to stay afloat on just a takeaway service, with business down 94 per cent.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth said they were taking “a deliberately safe and cautious approach”.
“Most importantly we're taking the time to gather the data over the coming weeks to determine whether it's safe to move to the next round of lifting restrictions,” he said.
The WA government will roll back to Phase 3 restrictions from June 6.
Sheridan Randall, 4th June 2020
