Clubs ACT takes another swing at the Health Protection Service

Jeff House is now supporting a trial of the scores on doors approach.

Well done, Jeff, for now standing up for improved food safety standards. Until someone is struck down with food poisoning, they don’t understand how important this is.

54-11 said :

Potus29 said :

Elizabethany said :

I do wonder why they are so scared about scores on doors and health checks. If they are doing the right thing, there shouldn’t be a problem…

I think the point is Elizabethany that scores on doors means grading ALL venues who are ALL doing the right thing. So even though the small suburban cafe is compliant with the food standards it gets a lower score and hence less business (which international experience shows will happen) simply because it can’t compete with the kitchen at the Hyatt Hotel that will throw more money at getting the top score.

Why should any venue be penalised for being compliant with food safety standards???

This still doesn’t answer why the clubs are so hell-bent on ensuring there is inadequate oversight of their operations. Most clubs are far from being a “small suburban cafe”. Jeff House is going all out on his campaign, and unfortunately the clubs are a very powerful lobby group in the ACT. (Disclosure – I am a member of 8 ACT clubs, and I no way support what House is doing in the name of members of the clubs he represents.)

54-11, this is not a campaign – this is doing my job and if you think this is me ‘going all out’ then you don’t know me very well.

This is also not just about Scores on Doors but the abundance of regulation the hospitality industry has been subjected to and continues to be subjected to.

The pending ‘Score on Doors’ is just another creep in regulation after a host of changes in a few short years. These changes have included… liquor fee increases (2009 max paid $3K – 2012 max paid $23.5K), smoking bans, outdoor seating fee increases, trading hour restrictions, complex risk assessment plans, compiling alcohol data (unique to the ACT), a host of penalties from new regulation (lining PS coffers) and never-ending regulatory signs turning business into Gov’t billboards. Worst of all is the never ending paper-burden imposed by the bureaucratic machine turning service providers into administrators.

The ACT Government has also announced they are committed to reducing Red Tape and the industry is waiting to see that put into action. And here we are being told there is more to come…

A ‘modus operandi’ that aims at a continuance of costly regulation on business will not serve to improve anything in the ACT. The estimated cost of Scores on Doors is $15m a cost to be borne by business.

Furthermore, the HPS has been exposed as having major administrative failings in their senior management… and we sit back and wonder… this is from the same Directorate that brings the ACT 12,000 fraudulent data entries. Is it possible to conceive that if the management in HPS had an agenda (a thinly veiled tax/charge regime) that they could somehow doctor inspection results and vilify a perfectly good industry… they are on record via an FOI as double counting prohibition notices and they were exposed by the Auditor-General as not keeping their data correctly.

If the ACT Government is truly committed to reducing Red Tape then there are some housekeeping issues they should address in the first instance.

Potus29 said :

Elizabethany said :

I do wonder why they are so scared about scores on doors and health checks. If they are doing the right thing, there shouldn’t be a problem…

I think the point is Elizabethany that scores on doors means grading ALL venues who are ALL doing the right thing. So even though the small suburban cafe is compliant with the food standards it gets a lower score and hence less business (which international experience shows will happen) simply because it can’t compete with the kitchen at the Hyatt Hotel that will throw more money at getting the top score.

Why should any venue be penalised for being compliant with food safety standards???

This still doesn’t answer why the clubs are so hell-bent on ensuring there is inadequate oversight of their operations. Most clubs are far from being a “small suburban cafe”. Jeff House is going all out on his campaign, and unfortunately the clubs are a very powerful lobby group in the ACT. (Disclosure – I am a member of 8 ACT clubs, and I no way support what House is doing in the name of members of the clubs he represents.)

Elizabethany said :

I do wonder why they are so scared about scores on doors and health checks. If they are doing the right thing, there shouldn’t be a problem…

I think the point is Elizabethany that scores on doors means grading ALL venues who are ALL doing the right thing. So even though the small suburban cafe is compliant with the food standards it gets a lower score and hence less business (which international experience shows will happen) simply because it can’t compete with the kitchen at the Hyatt Hotel that will throw more money at getting the top score.

Why should any venue be penalised for being compliant with food safety standards???

I do wonder why they are so scared about scores on doors and health checks. If they are doing the right thing, there shouldn’t be a problem…

“Were”, not “where”.