Dan Murphy’s court action: Transferred liquor licence did not legally exist, Danila Dilba says

THE liquor licence Woolworths would use to open its controversial Dan Murphy’s megastore in Darwin shouldn’t have been approved because it did not legally exist when the NT’s liquor licensing director made his decision, court documents reveal

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THE liquor licence Woolworths would use to open its controversial Dan Murphy’s megastore in Darwin shouldn’t have been approved because it did not legally exist when the NT’s liquor licensing director made his decision, court documents reveal.

Artist impressions of Darwin’s Dan Murphy’s store. Picture Katrina Bridgeford.

The supposed non-existence of the liquor licence is one of four arguments lawyers for Aboriginal health service Danila Dilba will use in their Supreme Court bid to thwart Woolworths major bottle shop plans, according to documents obtained by the NT News.

Dan Murphy’s liquor licence, approved by liquor licensing director Philip Timney after sensational legislative intervention by the NT government, was a transfer of an existing licence Woolworths had for a BWS store at Stuart Park. That bottle shop closed in October 2018.

Lawyers for Danila Dilba will argue a condition of the original licence was that it only “remained in force” as long as the store was a bottle shop, so the licence ceased to exist once the BWS closed.

And even the new liquor licensing rules enacted in 2019 didn’t change that fact, the lawyers will argue.

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This therefore rendered Mr Timney’s approval of the liquor licence transfer invalid, as there was no licence to legally transfer.

“The Director thereby fell into jurisdiction error or made an error of law which appears on the face of the record,” the writ states.

Lawyers for Danila Dilba will also argue that Mr Timney “failed to consider matters” he was required to consider before making the decision.

They also argue Mr Timney didn’t impose conditions on the Dan Murphy’s licence that would address potential problems, despite laying out the helpfulness of those specific conditions in his reasons.

Lawyer for Danila Dilba, Jacinta Lewin from Maurice Blackburn’s Social Justice Practice, said her client hoped Mr Timney’s decision would be quashed.

“It’s not about whether it was right or wrong, but whether the decision-making process was valid,” she said.

“In a practical sense, it would go back to the director to remake the decision in a lawful way.”

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The NT Government declined to comment. Woolworths was contacted.

The matter will be mentioned in the Supreme Court on March 19.

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