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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 2 Hansard (20 May) . . Page.. 433 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Mr Moore's response was incredibly arrogant. I do not know whether this is what happens when you join the Government team, but it was quite surprising to me. He said that this was a political stunt and that I was naive. That is a real shame. I cannot be as skilled at it as Mr Moore obviously is, but the shame of it is that his worldly view is there in that statement. This is not a political stunt. It is the result of two years' work of the Greens in looking at this issue of gambling and attempting to move this Assembly to the point where it actually takes some action to address the issues of concern to the community.

There has also been huge misrepresentation of my position by Mrs Carnell. I know that she was not listening to my speech. That is a pity, because I made it quite clear that we would not, as a committee, duplicate the work of the other committee. I said several times that this would be a good starting point for the select committee. I have spoken to Mr Rugendyke and Mr Kaine. Obviously, as members of that committee, we are not going to spend the resources of the Assembly unnecessarily or frivolously. I am a member of the Administration and Procedure Committee. I have a responsibility to look at issues concerning the budget of this place. It is quite absurd to suggest that we would employ a consultant just for the sake of it.

I also pointed out quite clearly in my speech that, if there were gaps in the work that came out of the ACT Government's competition policy inquiry, we may need to use someone to assist us in finding information about the particular areas where it is lacking in the report of the competition policy inquiry. I think it might be useful and timely to point out that this is an Assembly committee which has elected representatives on it. It is a different forum. As with the Belconnen pool proposal most recently, we have seen how dissatisfied the community is with how we are reviewing legislation to be in line with competition policy. We want to have another forum to look at it.

Mrs Carnell spoke about the competition policy forum in question time and was extremely unfair in her presentation of the facts of that particular forum and why it has not worked. Mrs Carnell continually said that people just did not turn up. Obviously, if there were a commitment from the Government to make this forum work, the next question would be: What is it that we can do to help this forum work? It is an instrument of the Assembly. We told the Government to develop this community forum for looking at competition policy. Of course there have been problems. I am very familiar with those problems. I can assure you, Mr Speaker, that the representation by Mrs Carnell of that forum and its history was totally inaccurate. I think that needs to be put on the record. There have been problems; they need to be addressed. It is quite obvious that Mrs Carnell is not interested in actually supporting having another forum look at how her Government is reviewing competition policy. This select committee will now look at the issue of gambling. It will take into account the work of this other committee. It will not duplicate it, if I have made myself clear.

Mr Moore said, "Everyone will just rush in and there will be many applications". I did check on that, because that is obviously a first concern. The reason I supported Mrs Carnell's second amendment, concerning looking at the issue of the cap, is that, despite all the posturing that has gone on in this debate and even though it is very tempting sometimes to posture back, I was listening to Mrs Carnell and I did check with the bureaucrat concerned and I think there has been some misunderstanding. The cap that

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