Page 1038 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
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places on God's earth, that all day and all night as well you might gamble as long as the Casino remained open.
And Wilde, at the end of his life, realised the problems of his previous life. Out of the depths he quoted Baudelaire's call to God, "O Seigneur, donnez-moi la force et le courage de contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans degout" - "O Lord, give me the strength and courage to consider my body and my heart without loathing".
I want now to consider the terrible dangers of addiction not only for an individual but for the state. And may the state say, "O Lord, give me the strength and courage to consider my body and my heart without loathing". I would remind the Assembly that, by Dr Dickerson's figures or the figures suggested yesterday by Mr Duby, about one per cent of Canberrans are already compulsive gamblers; that is, about 2,500 to 3,000 people. Dr Dickerson thinks it may be as many as 5,000. Please read the opening sections of the Caldwell report.
Consider then the rule of thumb ratio of how many people are affected by compulsive gamblers: wife or husband, family, employees and employers, banks and credit agencies, and friends. The rule of thumb number is 10 to one. This is not mine; this is in the literature. Say, 30,000 to 50,000 Canberrans. That is right now - look at the Caldwell report - before the introduction of a casino.
Raise that figure, as it suggested in the report, by another 10 to 15 per cent in a post-casino scenario. That is 35,000 to 60,000 people affected by compulsive gambling, one in five people in this city, and that is only the people in the city. We are not talking, Mr Humphries, merely about 84 additional gamblers. I would want to worry just as much about visitors to this city, visitors who come here to see their national capital. They do not come here to lose money. They do not come here to feed a gambling industry. They come here to see what is best about Australia, this country which I am committed to and I love; this city which I love.
They do not come here to be ripped off. They do not come here to get hooked. Mr Humphries' equations of yesterday worry me. I do not see it as a few tragedies on the one hand versus several thousand jobs, if there were to be those jobs, on the other. I believe in an ethic which cares for the lost lamb, the errant prodigal son. But, anyway, it is not just a few tragedies for a few individuals; it is a series of tragedies affecting the entire society.
But I want now to turn from the individual to the state, and I do what my father would do. He would quote Proverbs and I quote from the edition of the Bible, the Catholic approved edition, for which I am grateful to this Assembly, which gave it to me on 11 May. This is from chapter 29. These are great, great words. I ask you to think about them. Verse 2:
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