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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2014 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

states, shall we say, where most of them are coming from at this stage. So this is a win-win-it is a win for the ACT and it is certainly a win for those people who will choose, or are choosing, to use these sites.

I think it is essential that the gaming commission goes ahead with those applications that are in front of it at the moment and that those who get through what is a very strict process are allowed to get their licences in a timely fashion.

MS TUCKER (3.44): I hope that I will not have to speak to this motion in detail at this stage. Obviously, we are expected to debate this report fully so that Mr Humphries can then be happy and say, "Well okay, the Assembly wanted this report, you have got it, it is great, and we will get on with business as usual." That is a totally unacceptable process.

Members interjecting-

MS TUCKER: If Mr Humphries did not say that, that is fine. I have just talked to Mr Quinlan and hopefully he will adjourn this debate until such time as we have had time to look at this. I would suggest that it be adjourned until the next sitting week. I do not know what Mr Quinlan or Labor will decide to do. I am asking that Labor adjourn this debate because I think we need to have time to look at it.

When we had the original debate, the guts were cut out of my motion. The words "social and economic implications" were deleted from the motion. I remember that even the words "thoroughly investigate the issues" were deleted. The commission was not going to be called on to thoroughly investigate; it was just going to be called on to report.

Ms Carnell has just said the gambling commission has come out with a report, everything is in place, and we are doing as well as we can. Well, the code of conduct is not in place. If you have a look at the regulations relating to the gambling commission you will see that we are in a very early formative stage, particularly in respect of social impact issues. If you have a look-and I do not know if members of the government have done so-at the hundreds of pages of regulation you will see some very interesting issues that need to be more fully explored.

Basically, the social and economic impact takes the form of questions to providers of Internet services. There is a large list of questions, which I assume is one way that the commission thinks it will be able to collect data. That in itself is not a bad thing, except that I would suggest there needs to be a much greater emphasis on how that data is collected. These are the sorts of issues that I would have wanted to see the commission look at if it had had a brief from this Assembly to look at all the issues.

Ms Carnell: But it did not.

MS TUCKER: As Mrs Carnell is interjecting, it did not have that brief-that is right. I am just putting on the record once again that the commission was given a very limited brief but I do not think even that is necessarily fully addressed here.

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