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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2554 ..

Division 1 (continuing):

(c) limiting facilities that make it easy for a gambler to spend more than he or she originally intended, such as automatic teller machines, credit facilities and allowing persons to pay by cheque or credit card;

(d) providing mechanisms to allow problem gamblers to exclude themselves using a licensee's facilities for gambling;

(e) training staff to recognise and deal appropriately with people who are problem gamblers or are at risk;

(f) developing methods of dealing with staff or clients who are problem gamblers or are at risk.

(3) The Commission must, for each licence under a gaming law that permits the licensee to conduct gambling, develop and review a code of practice to apply to the licensees and make recommendations to the Minister for appropriate regulations.

14C. Education and counselling

(1) The Commission may carry out or sponsor-

(2) The Minister, or a resolution of the Assembly, may require the Commission to address particular matters when performing its functions under this section.".

I have already spoken to this amendment. It is about the code of practice and I spoke to that at the beginning. It is about putting in education and counselling as well as monitoring and research generally. I do not think I need to speak on that. Obviously, they were seen to be desirable functions of the commission.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (5.31): Mr Speaker, I indicate that I think that these provisions are reasonable. I note in particular that the codes of practice are still to be made in the usual way, that is, by way of regulations which will be made by the Minister and put on the table in the Assembly, with the possibility of disallowance or amendment by the Assembly. With the involvement here in a sense of the commission, the Government and the Assembly we should have a fairly reasonable basis on which to make provisions governing the things that are referred to in clause 14B(2).

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