Australian Duty Free Association presses to increase liquor allowance to New Zealand level

Australian Duty Free Association President Richard Goodman: “We’re a business that’s starved of our oxygen”

AUSTRALIA. As prospects of a ‘travel bubble’ between Australia and New Zealand grow, the Australian Duty Free Association is lobbying hard to raise the Australian liquor allowance to that of its trans-Tasman neighbour.

The New Zealand limit is three bottles of 1.125 litre spirits plus either six bottles of wine or 12 cans of beer. Travellers to Australia are limited to just 2.25 litres of any alcohol, equivalent to three bottles of wine or just over two 1 litre bottles of spirits.

Association President Richard Goodman, who is also Managing Director of Heinemann Australia, told The Moodie Davitt Report in a phone interview today that federal government reaction had been encouraging to an initiative to help stimulate the COVID-19 crisis-devastated duty free industry and to help get thousands of employees back to work.

“We’re a business that’s starved of our oxygen, be it passengers or sales at the moment. So we’re doing everything we can; it’s incumbent on us as retailers to pivot our business model and leverage any opportunity to return to a new normal. And it will be a new normal – the old normal of 2019 passengers is a long, long way away.

“And we see the matching of New Zealand purchase limits with Australia as a logical level playing field and a logical change to make. The Australian wine industry is enormous. It’s double that of New Zealand at A$3.5 billion compared to New Zealand’s NZ$1.83 billion. So we’ve got a lot of suppliers – be they craft spirits or wine companies – who really want to get back up and running and they rely on us. For some of them, 15-18% of their business is in travel retail. There’s no logical reason why the government shouldn’t support this.”

Goodman emphasised that the proposal was not a Heinemann initiative but a unified industry effort. “This is the initiative of the consolidated operators in Australia. It’s an Australian Duty Free Association initiative. And I’m proud to be working with such amazing leaders that exist across the different retailers that exist in Australia.

Asked about progress, he said: “We’ve been working on this topic for nearly eight months. And we’ve had a lot of meaningful discussions since January of this year, even before Coronavirus. We have written to the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and we’ve had some constructive dialogue with the Ministers associated with the legislation change – which borders across tourism and trade, home affairs, Treasury and taxation, so it’s challenging when there’s not one legislation that’s owned by a single Minister. But we know this is a great idea and we know it’s going to help Australian businesses.”

Asked if the travel bubble (meaning bi-lateral travel between two countries that consider each other safe) was likely to be implemented, Goodman said: “We are two countries that are in a very similar position in terms of the stemming of the Coronavirus… so I don’t think we’re far away. We rely on each other economically from a tourism perspective. A lot of Australians want to go to New Zealand and ski, for example. So it’s got a lot of legs and a lot of traction between the two countries. I definitely think it will happen.”

 

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