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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1099 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I am encouraging this Government - and I hope other members will support this encouragement - to enter into this desire with the rest of Australia. The Northern Territory is reluctant on sports betting, I understand, but everyone else, including Mr Howard, is very keen to have a national approach to this issue. That is why it is quite appropriate that we do not proceed with delimiting the cap on sports betting at this point. It is totally inconsistent with what the Prime Minister is asking for and the Senate committee has asked for - a short moratorium. I am not arguing that capping is the ultimate and best form of market regulation. I think it probably is not. The point is that it is something that we need to do at the moment until we work out how best to ensure that consumer protection and the public interest are guaranteed. It is a very strange argument to say that it is not appropriate to allow just four people to make money; that we should allow everyone to make money; that we should let as many people flood into the market as want to, and then we will look at it.

It is interesting to look at what is happening in the ACT with the two providers. We see that 95 per cent of Canbet's business comes from the United States. Members may be aware that the United States has prohibited Internet gambling business. They may also be aware that some people in Australia are calling for that. That is a national debate to be had as well. I do not particularly have a position on that, but I think this is one of the issues that will be discussed across Australia. The United States has prohibited Internet gambling businesses.

MegaSports has a licence in Nevada and it does not allow US citizens to use its service, because I assume it would lose its Nevada licence if it did. There is case law developing to suggest that there is a prohibition on Australian online gambling services taking bets from US citizens. There are obviously some very interesting jurisdictional legal issues here which I do not think anyone understands and which have not been worked out. That is one of the issues that came out of the Senate inquiry. We really have no idea what our responsibilities will be or what our liabilities will be if in little old Canberra we are assisting US citizens to partake in an activity which the US has decided, through its democratic government, is not a good activity.

The ethical question here is equally important. Is the ACT Government and this Assembly comfortable with the argument that it is good to make money in the ACT from online gambling because most of the punters do not live here? Is it ethical to support industries which move social harm to another community, even if, as in the US, those communities have chosen to prohibit it? What is it we are saying? I think that is a questionable ethical position. The Government needs to put a clear position on that.

Another issue in this discussion is the price the ACT Government has put on these licences. I have a question on notice about this, and I am looking forward very much to getting a response. We can see from the instrument that $10,000 is the licence fee for each year. I have been looking at this issue for some time and looking at the costs of regulation and monitoring and also the costs to industry. I can tell you that $10,000 is looking very generous.

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