Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education fails in bid to delay Dan Murphy’s hearing

A LAST-MINUTE attempt by anti-liquor lobby group FARE to torpedo hearings into whether liquor giant Dan Murphys should be allowed to set up shop in Darwin failed on Friday

Dan Murphy's plans to open a warehouse style bottle shop in Darwin

A LAST-MINUTE attempt by anti-liquor lobby group FARE to torpedo hearings into whether liquor giant Dan Murphy’s should be allowed to set up shop in Darwin failed on Friday.

At an unsuccessful injunction hearing in the Supreme Court, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education for the first time publicly flagged the arguments to stop the Liquor Commission from transferring a liquor licence from its small, defunct Stuart Park BWS to a planned Dan Murphy’s megastore near Darwin Airport.

Both the BWS and Dan Murphy’s chains are owned by supermarket giant Woolworths.

FARE’s barrister, Miles Crawley SC, said his client’s position was that because the Stuart Park BWS closed in October 2018, the licence relating to it had “come to an end” and Woolworths’s application for a substitution of premises could not succeed.

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He said Woolworths would have to change its application to apply for a new licence, which could not be granted because of the Gunner Government’s five year moratorium on new liquor licences.

FARE flagged it will take a two-pronged approach to prevent the opening of a Dan Murphy’s, with a technical argument revolving around whether the BWS licence still exists and can be transferred, as well as a public policy argument revolving around whether a new Dan Murphy’s might bring with it more alcohol-related harm in the community.

Woolworths’s barrister, Alistair Wyvill SC, described FARE’s attempt to delay the Liquor Commission hearings as an abuse of process, and said the foundation should pursue its arguments in the Liquor Commission.

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Mr Wyvill said FARE’s position that a liquor licence ended if a bottle shop stopped trading was “transparently weak” and would mean that if a bottle shop burnt down the licensee would lose its licence.

The Liquor Commission heading begins on Tuesday.