Page 2484 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 1993
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Clause 25 makes a poor start. Proposed new section 45 threatens somebody operating an unapproved link jackpot with a $5,000 fine or six months' gaol or both. This is okay when the offence takes place outside the club industry, for example in a tavern; but what if it is detected in a club? Everywhere else the Bill doubles the penalties for an offence committed by a body corporate over what they would be for a single person, or for an offence committed by a natural person. Why not here? Proposed new section 45F gives the commissioner a discretion on his own initiative to vary a link jackpot permit and for the variation to come into force not less than 28 days after serving notice of it on the permit holder; but if the commissioner, under proposed new section 45G, varies the permit at the request of the holder, the variation comes into force on whatever date is on the notice.
I ask the Treasurer to consider whether these two cases should not be consistent. As the Bill presently stands, the commissioner could fix a commencement date for the variation that was not convenient to the applicant, even though the applicant has made the request. I do not say that the commissioner would do that, but at present there is nothing to stop him doing it. Proposed new sections 45F and 45H expect the commissioner to approve applications from permit holders to vary previous approvals but do not envisage the payment of a fee for that service. Since everybody gets charged a fee for everything else, what happened to the principle of user pays here? Perhaps we can send the Treasurer out to find out where it went to.
Clause 25 and all the proposed new sections with numbers beginning with 45 on the subject of link jackpots merit a long view. We see a scenario of link jackpots on two or more machines. When they are in the same club, the permit holder is responsible to one body corporate only; but when the machines are in two or more clubs, and they can be, and bearing in mind that the Bill anticipates only one permit holder for any link jackpot regardless of how many clubs are parties to it, we have a problem. While the Bill defines the working relationship between the commissioner and the permit holder, it nowhere requires the commissioner to satisfy himself that the permit holder is acting in accordance with the wishes of his principals - that is, the bodies corporate of the participating clubs.
To the contrary, it obliges the commissioner to grant an application made by the permit holder, so long as it is in order, even if it is not in accordance with the wishes of the body that the permit holder represents. If I were the commissioner, this expression of the esteem in which the Treasurer holds my office would worry me more than a little bit. If this Bill is its measure, she would let the commissioner go down the gurgler in a suit brought by an angry club, with not so much as a second thought for his or her fate. In other words, she puts the onus right on the commissioner, and if he makes a mistake he wears it.
Clause 26 is a technical amendment of section 48 of the principal Act which provides an offence directly related to protection of the revenue. That is a good idea. Proposed new section 39E in clause 20 has a similar effect, yet the penalties which section 48 imposes are exactly half those in proposed new section 39E. Surely, Mr Deputy Speaker, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and I hope that the Treasurer is listening. I cannot understand why the penalties are different.
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