Who checks your age when you buy wine online?

The licence to sell

Selling liquor without a licence is an offence in New South Wales and Victoria. In New South Wales the rule is one sentence.

A person must not sell liquor unless the person is authorised to do so by a licence.

Liquor Act 2007 (NSW) s 7(1), on the NSW Legislation website

A conviction under that section carries a maximum of 100 penalty units or 12 months in prison, or both. An employee or agent of a licensee is outside the offence where the sale is made in accordance with the Act and the licence.

What counts as selling is wider than the word suggests, and delivery is inside it. In New South Wales the definition takes in barter or exchange, offering, agreeing or attempting to sell, exposing, sending, forwarding or delivering goods to be sold, and causing or permitting a sale or an offer to sell. The Act adds that supply includes disposing of, or delivering, liquor. The person in control of premises from which liquor is sold without a licence is taken to have sold it, unless they can show they had no knowledge of the sale and had used all due diligence to prevent it.

Victoria and Queensland reach the same ground in their own words. In Victoria a person who is not a licensee may neither sell liquor nor offer to sell it, and the maximum penalty is 240 penalty units or two years in prison; if a person is convicted of the offence, the court must also order all liquor found in their possession, and the vessels holding it, to be forfeited. Victoria also treats the facts on the ground as evidence: proof that someone other than the occupier consumed or intended to consume liquor on premises is evidence, against the occupier, that the liquor was sold to them, and more liquor on hand than the people living there reasonably need is evidence of sale, unless the premises are used solely for residential purposes.

Queensland defines selling to include supplying liquor in circumstances where the supplier gains or is likely to gain a direct or indirect benefit, and supplying it without charge in order to win or keep custom or another commercial advantage. A free bottle sent to win an order is inside the definition.

What counts as proof of age

Each Act names the documents a seller may accept, and they are more alike than different: something current, carrying the person’s photograph, issued by a government or an approved body, showing that the person has reached a particular age. In New South Wales the list starts with a motor vehicle driver or rider’s licence or permit issued by Transport for NSW, or the corresponding authority of another state, territory or country, and runs through a digital driver licence, a Photo Card and a digital Photo Card, a proof of age card issued by a public authority of the Commonwealth or a state or territory for the purpose of attesting identity and age, and an Australian or foreign passport. The regulations may prescribe further classes.

Two conditions run across the whole list. The document must show that the person has reached a particular age, and it must not have expired or otherwise appear not to be in force.

Taking the document is what turns the Act’s defences on. In New South Wales it is a defence to a prosecution for selling or supplying liquor to a minor if the person was 14 or over and, before the sale or supply, the defendant was given an evidence of age document that could reasonably be accepted as applying to that person and as proving they were 18 or over. The same defence is written for the delivery offence. Victoria’s Act gives a defence where the accused had sighted an evidence of age document for the person whose age matters, indicating that they were 18 or over. Queensland’s gives a defence where the defendant honestly and reasonably believed the person had turned 18, or had sighted acceptable evidence of age showing it, and it adds a warning in the other direction: evidence that the defendant never asked for acceptable evidence of age is evidence that the belief was not reasonable.

Queensland also recognises digital forms of its documents, including a digital authority and a digital evidence of age, in a subsection beside the physical list.

At the door

The delivery itself has its own rule in New South Wales, and it applies whichever state the sale was made in.

Despite subsection (4), a licensee or another person who is delivering packaged liquor on behalf of a licensee or other person that has sold the liquor by retail, irrespective of the State or Territory in which the sale is made, must not supply the packaged liquor to a minor.

Liquor Act 2007 (NSW) s 117(5B), on the NSW Legislation website

The maximum penalty under that subsection is 100 penalty units, 12 months in prison, or both. A defence is open to the person who delivered the liquor if they did not know that they were delivering liquor at all, nor could they reasonably have been expected to know it. And the word supply is doing real work here: section 117 says that, for that section, supplying liquor includes serving it to a person.

Behind the delivery sits the premises rule. A licensee must not cause or allow a minor to sell, supply or serve liquor on the licensed premises except with the approval of the Authority, which is the licence holder’s constraint rather than the buyer’s.

Victoria has its own offence at the door: a person making a delivery must not knowingly deliver liquor to someone under 18 without a reasonable excuse, and having seen an evidence of age document showing that the person receiving it is 18 or over is such an excuse. The maximum penalty is 120 penalty units. Victoria also writes the delivery exception from the other side. Its supply rules do not apply to packaged liquor supplied to a member of the licensee’s family, or to an employee or apprentice of the licensee, where that person is employed to deliver the liquor to someone of or over 18 for consumption away from the licensed premises. The Act also carries a residence exception: liquor may be supplied in a residence to a minor by the minor’s parent, guardian or adult spouse, or a person they have authorised, who can demonstrate responsible supervision of the supply, judged on factors that include the age of the minor, whether the adult supplying it is intoxicated, whether the minor eats with the liquor, whether the adult is supervising the minor’s consumption, the quantity and type of liquor and the time over which it is supplied, and whether the minor is intoxicated. A licensee must not permit a person under 18 to supply liquor on the licensed premises, unless that person is undertaking a training program the Commission has approved and supplies liquor in keeping with the program’s conditions.

Queensland’s street rule covers the ground around a licensed venue: a person must not supply liquor, or cause or permit it to be supplied, to a minor on a street or place adjacent to licensed premises, or in a public place. The general rule sits alongside it: a person must not sell liquor to a minor. Queensland also makes it an offence, on premises to which a licence or permit relates, to supply liquor to a minor, to permit or allow liquor to be supplied to a minor, or to allow a minor to consume liquor, and where that offence is committed by the licensee or an approved manager working at the premises and the person concerned is a minor, the maximum penalty is 250 penalty units.

State by state

The three states in the table are the three this site holds in full. Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory set their own rules for the sale and delivery of liquor, and nothing here applies one state’s law to another. The rules a website must show a buyer before an order are a separate part of the law again, and this guide stays with the three questions it set out to answer: who may sell, what counts as proof of age, and what happens at the door.