Page130 - Week 01 - Thursday, 3 December 2020
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trash the club sector, because it just does not sound like democracy to me. It just does not sound like it.
I know that I will hear from Minister Rattenbury on this motion. He is now the minister; so of course we are going to hear from him. We all know what his position is. He made it abundantly clear in a motion that he ran in this chamber in July. It was a motion that was heavily amended by Labor, through Gordon Ramsay, to reflect reality. If the motion in its original form had been voted on, it would have gone down 23 votes to two. Six weeks later and much of it is going to become government policy, despite the fact that 85 per cent of the electorate did not vote for it. I know that we will hear from Mr Rattenbury.
What I am keen to see is if anyone from the Labor Party is prepared to raise their head above the bunker and just explain to this parliament and explain to the club sector, explain to the employees of clubs, explain to the sporting groups, explain to the community organisations why their sensible, evidence-based approach for a moratorium on machine reduction and a moratorium on regulatory change is not their position now, because it was six weeks ago. I do not get it.
I did forecast this five months ago in this chamber. Five months ago in this chamber, back in July, I said, and these are the exact words:
… Labor’s gaming policies are … irrelevant. We all know that if there is to be a continuation of Labor government here in the ACT, it will be with the assistance of the Greens. … Standalone Labor gaming policy is completely irrelevant. It will always become a victim of power-sharing agreements.
And I said back then:
Mr Ramsay can go back to the clubs and say, “We’re really sorry, guys; this is what we wanted to do, but the Greens made us do this instead.”
Mr Ramsay is no longer here, but I can guarantee that no-one from Labor is going to be brave enough to go back to the clubs and say, because this is what Mr Ramsay said when he met with clubs finally, at the end of the term, as the Indians were circling the wagon, “I know you have done the heavy lifting. I know that there will not be any more machine reductions and regulatory change. That is what we said. But we sort of led you up the garden path and it is going to be tough now, is it not, because you are on your own. Good luck. Good luck with Mr Rattenbury.” Make no bones about it, Mr Ramsay was smart enough to know that things would be tough under these now-announced changes.
I respect that the motion that Mr Rattenbury brought to the chamber in July was not exactly what appears in the Greens’ power-sharing agreement but certainly there are many aspects of that motion that do. When we debated Mr Rattenbury’s motion back in July, Mr Ramsay said:
In relation to Mr Rattenbury’s call for bet limits, it is important to note that there are significant challenges in implementing these restrictions for the existing gaming machines … there will be costs involved and there are significant questions about whether clubs can bear those costs …
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