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Canberra Today 22°/24° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

AHA cries foul over RSA farce

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THE Australian Hotels Association (ACT) is up in arms over the requirement for staff handling alcohol in the ACT to hold a locally issued Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate.

AHA ACT General Manager Brad Watts said this “nonsense” restriction was having a major impact on hospitality businesses.

“A prime example occurred last weekend, when a licensed hotel hosted a major event and was assured by authorities that interstate staff RSA qualifications would be recognised. However, it’s understood licensing authorities changed their minds and the venue was forced to have qualified staff trained at the last minute,” Mr Watts said.

“Not recognising interstate RSA’s simply doesn’t make sense – the AHA ACT is calling on the ACT Government to fix the confusion and reform this red tape restriction immediately.”

It should be noted that the RSA course can be completed online for $49.

When your correspondent completed the course at CIT a couple of years ago the test was so simple that anyone failing it should probably be disqualified from voting let alone serving alcohol.

While obtaining an RSA certificate is trivially easy it’s easy to see the AHA’s point that it also serves very little real purpose.

In the unlikely event that some group of people with no prior experience of alcohol were to decide for apocalyptic reasons to really tie on then the knowledge of obtaining the certificate might come in handy. But in those circumstances its hard to see it making much difference.

Some might suspect the only real purpose of the certificate is to drive revenue to the ACT training system.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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