Lockouts: Stuck between a rock and a hard place

By Jason Thomas, AusComply

 How do we even start to tackle the mess we’re in?

Thanks to the destructive actions of a few, the subsequent legislative reaction from governments to try and manage them means a small but significant sector within the hospitality industry finds itself between a rock and a hard place. The hard place being community expectations on drug- and alcohol-fuelled violence, and the rock being current legislation. 

 Of course we’re talking about the liquor Industry and lock-out laws, particularly in New South Wales, recent joinee Queensland, and perhaps also soon South Australia.

While Governments look for legislative answers in the form of tougher legislation, increased regulation and enforcement, greater penalties and restrictive conditions, successfully operating a compliant venue in this evolving environment is becoming diabolical to say the least.

While both sides argue the benefits of their respective positions, the true answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

 That middle ground is a combination of:

• 1.       Legislative reward and encouragement. (The carrot, not always the stick)
• 2.       Comprehensive compliance
• 3.       Comprehensive venue management
• 4.       Improved monitoring capabilities
• 5.       Sharing the compliance load; and
• 6.       Readily accessible analytical capabilities.

Here at AusComply we pride ourselves on streamlining compliance tasks and providing tools that help our clients achieve points two through six above, while giving legislators confidence in the industry to achieve them. We have a range of clients from small independent pubs, group owners and large stadiums already benefitting from a far greater capacity to monitor their operations and better manage their risks.

“Despite not trading past midnight, I’ve been using the AusComply Electronic Incident Register and compliance software since early October 2015. I highly recommend the AusComply software as a cost effective and efficient business tool to help reduce and manage risk,” states Lyn Humphreys, licensee of Oatley Hotel and senior vice president of AHA NSW.

The Improvement to venue operations is so great we’ve even caught the eye of some insurers who are now considering reducing insurance premiums to better reflect the improved management and reduction of venue risks.

AusComply’s Electronic Incident Register, (also known as Digital Incident Registers) is compliant with both the Liquor and Security legislation. In addition to capturing incident reporting obligations, AusComply also tracks and manages your staff RSA’s, Security licences and many other document types, effectively also eliminating the need for hard copy compliance folders.

With significant additional functionality also now planned and underway the benefits will only continue to grow. AusComply helps our clients establish a consistent culture of compliance throughout their business and easily and quickly demonstrates that to regulators.

"We introduced AusComply’s Electronic Incident Register at one of our venues in October 2015 and were so happy with the system, were very soon converting all of our venues paper based incident registers to AusComply," says Jay Beecroft, group operations manager for Riversdale Group.

“It’s been great watching the evolution of AusComply’s system and the increasing benefits to our group. We eagerly await the additional functionality they have planned and reaping the benefits it will bring to our operations.”

With greater industry driven capabilities for the management of risks, legislators could rightly acknowledge these achievements and then reward those venues with appropriate consideration.

Join the innovation revolution, make a difference and give us a call now on 1300 2 COMPLY.

AusComply is an Australian software company, that helps its clients demonstrate a “culture of compliance” through the accurate recording, storage and reporting of incident related data. AusComply has built a reputation for excellence in incident data collection and reporting and is committed to providing industry leading “mobile first” compliance solutions.