Legal

ONLINE LIQUOR PURCHASES

IT’S NOT A MINOR ISSUE

Is your teenager going to a ‘gatho’ this weekend? A party? Pre-Formals? If so, there is a fair chance that there will be alcohol available, or attempts to get it. Gone are the days where parents are concerned about their teenage children raiding their liquor cabinets, or asking their older brother or sister, who is over 18, to buy alcohol for them from the local liquor store. The advent of the internet and electronic retail platforms has changed the landscape for underage drinking.

By Walter MacCallum, a Principal at Russell Kennedy Aitken Lawyers.

While applicable legislation and regulation has kept up-to-date for bars, restaurants and nightclubs around Australia, there appears more to be done in the world of online liquor sales.

Under the New South Wales legislation, a licensee that sells alcohol online is required to ensure that: • the buyer supplies their date of birth to confirm that the buyer is at least 18 years old, but the buyer only needs to supply their date of birth once if the seller records it for future purchases; and • on the delivery side of things, the licensee or seller of the liquor needs to ensure that the deliverer delivers to the adult person who placed the order, to another adult at the premises who undertakes to accept it on behalf of the person placing the order or, where the delivery is not made on the same as the order is taken or the sale made, in accordance with the customer’s delivery instructions.

The regulators, at this point in time, have focused on placing the onus on the licensee seller to take certain limited steps to ensure proof of age and that the delivery occurs to the correct purchaser who is over 18. Recognising these shortcomings, many online liquor sellers have taken self-regulatory steps in order to comply with their over-arching RSA obligations. The current steps and measures that are variously put in place by online sellers of liquor include: • implementing data intelligence systems to recognise frequent purchasers; • stricter point of sale identification protocols; • controlling delivery either through that ensuring that all delivery drivers are employed by the seller and engaged in regular RSA training and refresher courses; or • utilising the services of a reputable third party delivery service, such as Australia

Post ecommerce delivery service, which implements its own liquor delivery service, which includes identification checks at the point of delivery.

While the sellers of online liquor have taken it upon themselves to self-regulate at a level greater than the current legislation, it is the writer’s view a lot more needs to be done not just at the delivery end of things, but at the point of sale. Like any online sales platforms, privacy issues are to be balanced with the duty of care owed to the community when selling liquor online. The concerns for regulatory compliance and responsible service of alcohol also needs to be balanced with the commercial needs of online sellers, and in particular, maintaining the ultimate selling point for online sales, namely, convenience. If an online platform is not easy to use and ‘convenient’, then sales will not necessarily follow.

As any parent of teenagers will know, teenagers are incredibly resourceful and the internet provides far greater ways and means to purchase alcohol than ever before. The case studies show a clear exposure to online sales via credit cards where parents’ credit cards (or credit cards belonging to other adults in the home) are often used to purchase liquor online. No longer is it the case where a teenager would have to find an adult to go and purchase alcohol for them, the online platform provides a fairly easy way around this by simply using an adult’s credit card details, an adult’s driver’s licence, and then ultimately, providing instructions to the delivery driver to leave the alcohol outside the house, on the guise that the ‘adult’ is at work and not able to receive delivery personally.

Clearly, verification of age at point of sale and point of delivery needs to be the subject of clearer and more comprehensive regulation. The responsibility needs to be shared, in the writer’s view, between the relevant stakeholders – licensee sellers, deliverers of alcohol products and online platform intermediaries. Perhaps it is also now time to place some of the burden on parents who may too freely allow their credit card details to be shared with their children.

Online sales of liquor is only on the rise and the law needs to keep pace.

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