Page 6039 - Week 18 - Thursday, 12 December 1991
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Territory today? I say to you that it would not have, because it knows the economic indicators that the Left of the Labor Party do not. This article, of September 1987, says:
As a whole, despite apparently high attendance rates, Australian casinos have had lower turnovers than their counterparts overseas.
Any good Liberal knows that they have put workers off sequentially in Adelaide and at the Burswood casino in Perth. Any good Liberal knows that the share of the gambling dollar in Adelaide which came back to the South Australian Government through its TAB operations was 33.9 per cent, but that after the casino was opened in the railway station there it went down to 28.5 per cent. That translates into millions of lost government revenue, and the Government went into frantic advertising and the aggressive opening of pub TAB outlets and all the rest of it. It did not make up the dollar loss, and workers were put off in Adelaide last week.
In Tasmania the racing industry has never recovered. Before the Wrest Point casino started operating the racing element of the gambling dollar was 68 per cent; in 1987 it was down to 38.6 per cent. It has gone down further since. I attended a racing Ministers conference in Perth on 24 February 1991 at which racing Ministers throughout this country opposed casinos. Some of them realised how stupid it would be of this Territory to open a casino, and they made it clear to me.
Let us talk about the ACT TAB revenue. Last financial year about $76m went through the TAB. Six per cent went to ACT government revenue, and that is a precious 6 per cent; 3.5 per cent went out to the racing industry; and under our revised rules 1.75 per cent went out to the racecourse development fund. There are going to be long-term reverberations in terms of distribution when we find our TAB revenues down.
I am aware that next to no-one is listening to this debate, but I want to be right and I want to be right on the record. I want to say that no sensible Liberal government would have made this decision. I will tell you why Mr Kaine's Liberal Party made the decision. It was because the right wing of the Labor Party has captured the Liberal ticket. That is the reason, and I need not go any further, because what has happened to the Liberal Party is widely agreed in this town. It certainly has happened, and I close the circuit on the MPI. We have a true coalition of interests.
I move to respond to the Chief Minister. She said that the Rally rats on its promises. Mr Berry knows that I held my ground all the way to the line on workers' compensation yesterday. I stand up here before my maker. The only area
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