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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1914 ..

MS CARNELL

(continuing):

In the ten months that the Committee took to complete its terms of reference, two interim reports were tabled and the final report was handed down on 25 March 1999.

Mr Speaker, the final report of the Select Committee on Gambling has not addressed the core issue. Unfortunately, the report does not identify or quantify the social and economic impacts of gambling in the ACT.

The report simply calls for more research and data collection programs, to be established.

Similarly the report does not appear to provide a balance of experiences and observations between gambling counsellors and policy makers.

Finally, the Select Committee appears to have drawn a number of conclusions from interstate evidence without fully considering the differences between the mature gaming market in the ACT to those jurisdictions that have only recently seen exponential growth in the numbers and accessibility of gaming machines.

Mr Speaker, aside from the criticisms about the lack of research undertaken by the Select Committee to determine the social and economic impacts of gambling in the ACT and the inadequacies in achieving a balance of opinions, the Select Committee has made a number of recommendations that, if implemented, may improve the social fabric relating to gambling in the ACT.

The Government has adopted a number of the recommendations of the Select Committee on Gambling.

In regard to the recommendations, the Government has:

established a gambling project fund to facilitate the conduct

of research and the oversight of monitoring activities, data

collection and social programs in respect of gambling;

agreed that the proposed research, data collection, education campaign, needs assessments will be undertaken with funding provided by the gambling project fund.

broadened the range of functions of the proposed Commission to acknowledge its role in research and monitoring of gambling;

renamed the proposed Commission as the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission;

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