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New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland

Mobile bar duties, read off the bar back

Behind any bar there is a strip of wall the guests never study: the cards and charts the people pouring glance at between orders. This guide pins five duties up there, each one the bar business’s or the server’s own, in the words of the liquor laws of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. It is published by Dotto from the Acts and the Regulation listed at the foot of each page.

General information about the law in those three states, not legal advice. Each card names the Act to check.

The bar back

Five cards above the speed rail

Each card is a guide, and each is a duty that sits with whoever runs the bar or pours the drinks. Every rule on them carries the name of the state whose Act says it.

  • Card 1 · Training

    RSA for bar staff

    NSWStaff of licensed premises need a recognised competency card with a current RSA endorsement to sell, supply or serve liquor by retail there (Liquor Regulation 2018 cl 63(1)). VICUnder four kinds of licence, the licensee must see that servers complete an approved program (s 108AB). QLDA current training course certificate is a condition of the licence (s 141C).

  • Card 2 · Age

    Minors and the bar

    Each of the three Acts makes it an offence to sell or supply liquor to a minor, binds the licensee as well as the server, and words its own narrow exceptions. NSWIn New South Wales, “A person must not sell liquor to a minor” (s 117(1)).

  • Card 3 · ID

    Checking ID at the bar

    Each Act lists the documents that count as evidence of age, and each gives the person charged a defence built on such a document, with limits that differ; Queensland also accepts an honest and reasonable belief that the person was 18 or over, though not asking to see evidence of age is evidence that the belief was not reasonable. NSWThe New South Wales defence in s 117(3), for instance, answers only the offences in s 117(1) and (2), and only where the person was 14 or older.

  • Card 4 · Refusal

    Refusing service to an intoxicated guest

    NSWA licensee, or a licensee’s employee or agent, must not sell or supply liquor to an intoxicated person on the licensed premises (s 73(2)), and for a catering-service licence that rule also reaches private domestic premises (s 73(6)). VICIn Victoria, a licensee or permittee must not supply liquor to a person in a state of intoxication (s 108(4)(a)). QLDQueensland binds any person on premises to which a licence or permit relates not to supply liquor to a person who is unduly intoxicated or disorderly, or permit or allow it to be supplied to or consumed by them (s 156(1)).

  • Card 5 · Selling

    Who counts as selling

    NSWQLDIn both states “sell” includes to “cause or permit to be sold or offered for sale”. VICIn Victoria, “supply” includes to “give away”. QLDQueensland’s definition of selling also reaches supply for “a direct or indirect pecuniary benefit”, and free supply “to gain or keep custom or other commercial advantage”; this card applies that wording to Queensland only.

Three states

New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland

Every rule here is labelled with its state, because the three Acts are written differently and a rule in one is not the rule in another. Other states and territories are not covered.

The guides read the Liquor Act 2007 and the Liquor Regulation 2018 for New South Wales, the Liquor Control Reform Act 1998 for Victoria and the Liquor Act 1992 for Queensland. Each page names the version it read in its source list.

Penalties are given in penalty units, the way each Act states them.

This guide

The duty of the person pouring

Every card is about what the bar business and its staff must do while liquor is being poured. Event licences and how to apply for them are a separate subject, and so is asking a guest to leave; neither is covered here.

The cards are best read in order. The card on RSA for bar staff comes first, and the minors card and the ID card are written to be read together.