By Andy Young
The leader of the opposition in Western Australia has pledged to change the process of liquor licence applications if he wins next year’s election.
Mark McGowan (pictured) was speaking at a Tourism Council breakfast this week when he vowed to reduce the role of police in the application process and give the tourism sector a greater say.
Seven West Media reported that McGowan said the current constraints on the state’s hospitality industry should be removed. He added the “automatic objections” that the police and Department of Health raised to new licensing application were a waste of time and resources.
He also said that the current restriction on not being able to resubmit a failed licence application within three years would be removed by his government.
Shadow police minister Michelle Roberts said that the recent liquor licence application by the State Theatre Centre highlighted the problem of automatic police objections in Western Australia.
Police objected to the application lodged by the theatre, with Roberts saying: “It would have been the only State Theatre Centre in the world without a liquor licence.”
A breathe of fresh air and sign that at least some of WA’s political elites are prepared to stand-up to the powerful evangelical and Nanny State conservatives who dominate to keep WA in a perpetual state of semi-prohibition.
We wish that not only are Police removed from the equation but the draconian Dept of Liquor Licensing be consigned to the same bin as the Potato Marketing Bureaucracy and the lead of international tourism best practice be adopted along the same lines as Japan and many European countries.
Why not WA join the 21st Century and allow its entrepreneurs to develop a truly modern and unique tourism industry catering for the emerging ‘limitless potential’ of global tourism.
Trouble for WA of course is the same as its always been; government (including parliament) is full of entrepreneur fearing bureaucrats, functionaries and Sunday school preacher like dullards.