Page 3529 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 September 1990
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Opposition; it is just that the Government has been attacked very strongly by the LCA in recent weeks for being non-consultative. My advice is that, although the proposal for any of us who are going to put $2 into a machine to increase our potential advantages could not be rejected, as the law stands it is the Gaming and Liquor Authority that determines the percentage pay-out applicable to each gaming machine - that is section 17 of the Gaming Machine Act 1987 - not the Minister.
It is our proposal, in the destructuring of GALA, to give the Minister determinative power so that percentage pay-outs are no longer stuck historically in the legislation but can be made more flexible. The implication of what the Leader of the Opposition is seeking is to alter the pay-out figure before I, as Minister, have spoken to probably the larger 20 clubs who might be interested in taking the machines on. I believe it is necessary to do that, and I say that for a couple of reasons.
We have just moved to correct inequitably impacting tax scales. Allowing a higher pay-out to the larger clubs may well operate to increase patronage to those clubs with the larger denomination machines. They can afford, in effect, to decrease their earnings because they are larger clubs. It adds to the spiral effect that is driving some of the smaller clubs out of the industry.
I know that there is a view afoot that inevitably 67 clubs in our town is too many and that some are going to go out, and some are going out, as we well know and as observed recently. But my advice is that this proposal put forward by the Opposition needs to be looked at in the context of what this likely added attraction is going to do for a likely number of clubs. I think the Leader of the Opposition would concede that it will favour the larger clubs because it is the larger clubs that will bring these machines in. I believe we need to debate this more fully, perhaps here, but certainly out there. I am quite amenable to the Opposition moving this amendment again in our next sittings which, I think, commence on 16 October, if we can get through some of those assessments and queries about what clubs are going to purchase the machines. I understand that some clubs have moved already, because they have been pressing for a while, and we could see these machines in within six weeks. I think there is time then, I say to the Leader of the Opposition, to settle this one; otherwise you are asking me to allow GALA to set a percentage figure, say next week, and then the machines may well have to be reprogrammed - and I understand that is an administrative effort in itself - if we change things again after we have completed our review.
I just feel the amendment is premature. I do not have any principled objection to it and I do ask the Opposition to consider that, although rejecting it, the Government will happily accommodate that proposal within a short time.
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