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Card 5 of 5 · Selling

Who counts as selling liquor at a mobile bar

In New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland the liquor Acts give “sell” and “supply” wider meanings than the everyday words: in New South Wales and Queensland, selling includes causing or permitting a sale, and in Victoria, supplying includes giving liquor away. Queensland’s definition of selling also takes in supply for a direct or indirect pecuniary benefit, and free supply to gain or keep custom, and this card applies that wording to Queensland only.

General information about the law in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, not legal advice. The official text to check is each state’s liquor Act, linked at the foot of this page.

NSW“Sell” and “supply” in New South Wales

Section 4 of the Liquor Act 2007 says that “sell includes any of the following”, and lists four things:

  1. “barter or exchange”
  2. “offer, agree or attempt to sell”
  3. “expose, send, forward or deliver for sale”
  4. “cause or permit to be sold or offered for sale”

The same section says “supply includes dispose of or deliver”, and s 117(12) adds, for the minors offences in s 117, that “supply of liquor includes serving liquor to a person”. So in New South Wales the person who pours and hands over the drink supplies it, and a person who causes or permits a sale is, on the Act’s words, selling.

Staff, and whoever runs the premises

Two parts of s 7 speak to who is answerable when liquor is sold. Under s 7(2), an employee or agent of a licensee does not commit the offence in s 7(1), selling liquor without being authorised by a licence, if the sale is made “in accordance with this Act and the authorisation conferred by the licence”. And under s 7(3), where liquor is sold on or from premises in breach of s 7(1), “the occupier, manager or person apparently in control” of the premises is taken to have sold it unless they prove both that they “had no knowledge of the sale” and that they “had used all due diligence to prevent the sale of liquor on or from the premises”.

VIC“Supply” in Victoria

The Liquor Control Reform Act 1998 defines supply, in s 3(1), to include “sell, offer or expose for sale, exchange, dispose of and give away”. Drinks handed out free are supplied, in Victoria’s words, as much as drinks sold.

The evidence rules in s 107

Section 107(1) makes it an offence for a person who is not a licensee to sell liquor or offer it for sale. Section 107(2) carries the same idea for staff as New South Wales: the offence in s 107(1) does not apply to a sale, or an offer to sell, by a licensee’s employee or agent that is in line with the licence and the Act. The section also adds two rules of evidence that point at the occupier of premises:

  • Proof that someone other than the occupier drank, or meant to drink, liquor on the premises is evidence, as against the occupier, that the liquor was sold to that person (s 107(4)).
  • Having more liquor on the premises than the people living there reasonably need is evidence that the occupier sold liquor (s 107(5)).

Neither evidence rule applies to premises the court is satisfied are “used solely for residential purposes” (s 107(6)).

QLD“Sell” in Queensland

Section 4 of the Liquor Act 1992 says “sell includes”, and lists:

  1. “barter or exchange”
  2. “offer, agree or attempt to sell”
  3. “expose, send, forward or deliver for sale”
  4. “cause or permit to be sold or offered for sale”
  5. “supply or offer, agree or attempt to supply”, either “in circumstances in which the supplier derives, or would be likely to derive, a direct or indirect pecuniary benefit”, or “gratuitously, but to gain or keep custom or other commercial advantage”

The first four match New South Wales word for word. The fifth is from Queensland’s Act. In Queensland, supply, or an offer, agreement or attempt to supply, can count as selling where the supplier gets or is likely to get a direct or indirect pecuniary benefit, or where it is free but meant to win or keep custom or another commercial advantage. This card applies that wording to Queensland only.

Dry hire

By dry hire, this card means a bar and its staff hired out for an event while the host buys the drinks. The New South Wales and Victorian text read here does not settle whether that arrangement is selling: the definitions above are what each Act says, and how they apply to a particular arrangement is a question for the state’s liquor regulator or a lawyer. Queensland’s wording in s 4(e) applies in Queensland only, and this card does not apply it to any arrangement either.

The duties on the other cards are written about supplying as well as selling: New South Wales s 117(2) and s 73(2), Victoria’s s 119 and s 108(4)(a), and Queensland’s s 156(1) all use the word supply. Each still applies only where its own words say it does, and the minors card and the refusal card give those words in full.