Page 1346 - Week 04 - Thursday, 5 May 2022
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management by 1 July 2024. This gap training is considered necessary, given that licensees in charge have overarching responsibility for the management and compliance of the real estate business and its employees.
Currently, licensed agents are not required to complete any management or accountability training. The prescription of seven units of gap training for all class 1 agents means Canberrans can be confident that all licensees in charge of a real estate business in the territory have demonstrated competency in the necessary core skills to manage a real estate business, including ethics, compliance and trust management.
The bill also inserts a regulation-making power to allow for the creation of transitional measures in the event of any unforeseen issues arising during the implementation of the reforms. This mechanism will provide government with an additional, flexible, short-term means of supporting the real estate industry through the transition to a new licensing framework.
Let me turn briefly to the remaining sections of the bill. The bill contains amendments to the licensing framework for gaming machine supplies within the Gaming Machine Act 2004 and the Gaming Machine Regulation 2001 to provide that only corporations, rather than individuals, may be approved as suppliers of gaming machines.
These amendments serve two purposes. Firstly, they give effect to how the industry operates in practice; and, secondly, they function as consumer protection measures to support the ACT government’s commitment to reducing gambling harm. In the time that the current act has been in effect, no individual has been licensed as a sole operator gaming machine supplier in the territory. Due to the complexity of manufacturing, selling or servicing machines to national standards, it is unlikely that an individual would operate in such a capacity. These amendments reflect how supplier approvals are held in practice.
The amendments ensure that gaming machine suppliers are registered as companies under the commonwealth Corporations Act. This ensures that the entities are subject to additional regulatory checks, as all companies must comply with various notification and reporting requirements under the commonwealth act.
The focus on consumer protection is reflected in the creation of a new offence of supplying a gaming machine without a supplier approval. A penalty of 100 penalty units is intended to align with other offence provisions within the act, including acquiring a gaming machine without a licence or authorisation, or possessing or operating a gaming machine without authorisation. This also aligns with provisions for other occupations working without a licence, such as the offence of selling liquor without a licence, and engaging in legal practice without a licence. This is an important measure to help mitigate the risk of harm to gaming machine users in the ACT.
The bill also makes amendments to the Race and Sports Bookmaking Act 2001 and the Race and Sports Bookmaking Regulation 2001 to provide that only corporations and not individuals or syndicates may hold a sports bookmaking licence. As with the gaming amendments, the amendments to the licensing framework for sports
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