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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1097 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This instrument we are debating today was justified by the Minister in the explanatory memorandum by the findings of the Allen Consulting Group's national competition policy review of legislation relating to ACT TAB Ltd and bookmakers. It is interesting to note that the decision to remove the cap was made last December, before such a report existed, and no justification was given at that time.

Last year, when I asked for the report, I was told I could not have. Finally, it was tabled yesterday, the day before this debate. I am not at all happy with this process. As members are aware, competition policy reviews are not the definitive documents on issues of public interest in decisions related to the imposition of competition policy. In the last sitting period we debated legislation on the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission, whose function is, among other things, to investigate competitive neutrality complaints and other issues related to implementation of competition policy.

We have also set up a Gambling Commission, which has responsibility to advise the Minister and the Assembly on issues of public interest and consumer protection related to gambling. One would think it was pretty obvious that the gambling industry, of all industries, needs to be regarded as having particular consumer protection and public interest concerns. If not, why did we have a select committee in this Assembly to look at the social and economic impacts of gambling? Why did the Senate have such an inquiry? Why did both these reports and many other reports make recommendations about problem gambling, consumer protection and so on, and about the need to do more research and to improve our understanding of what governments' promotion of gambling in order to get easy money for themselves through taxes is doing to our society? Why did we see my legislation imposing a cap on the number of poker machines get support in this place?

Why are the churches of Australia speaking out on this? For heaven's sake even our poll-driven Prime Minister is making statements of concern about the matter. But in the ACT our Government is obviously not too worried. Even when they knew the Senate Inquiry was looking at the issues of online gambling, they proceeded happily with their instrument to definitely remove the cap. It really is no wonder that those people who are seeking a national approach are so disappointed with the ACT's grab for cash in this instance.

There are a number of points I think I should make in this debate. For the benefit of all members, I will explain exactly how the various sorts of gambling are defined and what is operating in the ACT now. Internet gambling includes two different activities - online gaming and interactive wagering, including betting on sports and other events conducted over the Internet. That is called interactive wagering in the Senate report. The Senate committee report called for a short moratorium on Internet gambling, including sports betting.

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