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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2560 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (5.44): Mr Speaker, I support the sentiment of what Ms Tucker is trying to do, but I think she goes way too far with the terms of the amendment. I am advised that it would have quite unintended consequences and would exclude anyone who, in their own right or because of what their spouse has done, has had a connection with an organisation which has been issued with a licence under a gaming law in the previous five years.

Gaming laws include a range of laws administering all sorts of things, right down to lotteries and trade promotion permits. Many people involved in charities, for example, take out permits on behalf of those charities to conduct a lottery. It is also done for their local school and for an organisation of which they are a member to conduct a lottery. If you were involved as the permit holder for a lottery at any time in the previous five years - goodness knows, some people would not even remember back that far whether they had put their name on a piece of paper to take out a lottery licence - or, for that matter, your spouse had been, you would not be eligible to take up a place on the commission.

Similarly, companies might be involved in trade promotions or, conceivably, taking lottery permits. If you have been a director of that company or your spouse has been a director of that company, you would be ineligible to take a place on the commission. It might be a very tenuous connection with a licence under a gaming law, but the breadth of the way in which this amendment is drafted would catch such a person. Mr Speaker, if we went ahead with this amendment, I think we would find people occasionally being caught unintentionally by those provisions. They might not have realised that 41/2 years ago their wife had been the person who signed the form for the local school to take out a lottery permit for a raffle.

I think that the amendment is quite too broad. Obviously, if a person is involved in a relevant way with a corporation or, in their own right or their spouse's right, with gaming activities of some kind, they would be viewed for appointment very unfavourably by any government worth its salt. You would be very foolish, as a Minister, to appoint a person who had clear connections of some kind with an industry that would put him in conflict of interest with his job as a commissioner. Mr Speaker, things such as the Bowen declaration that members have to complete before they are appointed to such bodies are designed to pick up those sorts of connections and governments exercise discretion about them. I think, to be quite frank, we should let the discretion in those circumstances cover this situation, rather than try to prescribe it in the way that Ms Tucker has referred to.

Amendment negatived.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (5.46): Mr Speaker, I do not think that there are any further amendments other than my own. I have quite a few of them. I seek leave to move together the remaining amendments on the sheet circulated in my name.

Leave granted.

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