Page 941 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 26 July 1989
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We have taken all those things into account in the recommendations that the committee has come up with. I think people will see, when they read and examine these recommendations closely, that should they be adopted any casino in Canberra would be probably the most excessive- gambler-friendly casino in Australia. We particularly have recommended that steps should be taken to ensure that people who are having problems with their excessive gambling should be able easily to obtain help and so also should members of their family. I think that is a very important thing.
The committee's final term of reference was the "implications from the operation of casinos in Australia as may be relevant to the desirability of a casino in Canberra". You can take that a lot of ways. (Extension of time granted) The vast majority of people who wrote letters objecting to the placement or establishment of a casino in the ACT used the argument that crime and criminal elements would be associated with the management and running of the casino. I would like to state categorically here and now that no one on the committee, even our dissenting members, was able to find any proof in any way of criminal involvement in the management of casinos in Australia. I have been assured by police officers, but in particular I refer to the current commissioner for police in Tasmania, a man who has had extensive experience in policing over many years in the Victoria Police Force and in the National Crime Authority, that criminal involvement in casino management is simply non-existent. We had reports from our own Australian Federal Police who advised that they had had no information of any kind over a number of years of criminal involvement in the management of casinos. The casinos in Australia are probably the squeakiest clean casino operations in the world, from what I could find out from research we have done.
That brings us to the final question of whether it is appropriate to have a casino in the nation's capital. Once again, this is a major contention of people who are opposed to casino development. The Caldwell report looked into this matter at length and I can only concur with its findings. It found that Australians as a whole and Canberrans in general had no problems with the establishment of a casino within the national capital. I must admit that those reports did not address the problem of a casino on section 19, but the information that we have had from opinion polls and other surveys taken would indicate that, with the exception of a very vocal minority who have very strong feelings, which people have to remember are quite legitimate feelings, the vast majority of people in Canberra feel that the location of a casino on section 19 will not greatly or adversely affect the role of Canberra as the nation's capital.
With that in mind, I would urge members to read the recommendations of the report. We have put a lot of thought and effort into it, we know it is a contentious
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