Paul McGirr successfully defended the Collector Hotel at Parramatta against allegations that it failed to comply with the Public Health orders in place in September 2020, in particular its Covid Safety Plan and spacing of poker machines.

The case had drawn widespread attention in publican circles after regulatory body Liquor and Gaming NSW began issuing fines in relation to alleged breaches of COVID safety plans despite releasing a statement of regulatory intent to industry stakeholders suggesting it would take a common sense approach bearing in mind the impact of COVID on the industry generally.

“A poker machine can’t transmit COVID to another poker machine,” lawyer Paul McGirr told Downing Local Court on Wednesday.

Mr McGirr was acting for the owners of Parramatta’s Collector Hotel, which had been fined by Liquor and Gaming NSW for breaching COVID regulations in relation to the spacing of the poker machines in its gaming room.

But Mr McGirr told the court it only mattered if there were people sitting at the machines, which there weren’t because of a range of measures employed by the pub, including hiring a full-time COVID marshal who ensured people were not sitting on machines that were next to each other.

This Collector’s owners had also spent $90,000 refurbishing the pub’s gaming room to properly space the poker machines.

Investigators for Liquor and Gaming had gone into the pub in September armed with tape measures, and issued an infringement notice after alleging the pub’s poker machines were not spaced 1.5m apart.

However the Public Health regulations had stated that the spacing had to be implemented “where possible”. Liquor and Gaming NSW failed to address the issue of possibility and were unable to prove that machines weren’t spaced 1.5m apart.

Magistrate Antrum dismissed the offence after a lengthy hearing.