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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2443 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
a useful review of the legislation and identified several very troubling anomalies. Despite the deletion of the words "thoroughly investigate" from the original motion and despite the deletion of the requirement for an investigation of the social and economic impact from the original motion, the commission has, in fact, prepared a quite useful report.
However, I do not understand how the conclusions follow from the substance of the report. Basically, the conclusions appear to be saying that everything is fine. In light of some of the findings, I have prepared an amendment to the motion to take note of the report which will allow the Assembly to take responsibility for addressing the issues arising from this report.
On page 8 of the report a surprising claim is made about staffing. The report reads:
... preliminary indications are that the Commission requires additional staffing in order to meet its statutory obligations and ongoing regulatory functions across the broad spectrum of work it undertakes.
That sounds a bit worrying; the commission is not adequately resourced. In the body of the report we are told that it would not be possible to divert resources from other areas to meet the need in assessing applications because these areas are not adequately resourced to ensure an effective regulatory system.
Despite not having prepared a comprehensive discussion paper on the effects of interactive gambling and despite the fact that, as far as this Assembly is aware, there has not been a meeting of the commission as a whole to consider the appropriate response to interactive gambling-that is, to look at the broader social issues and so on-the chairman of the commission and the CEO have given policy advice to the minister that a regulatory system is all that is needed to prevent harm to gamblers.
Whatever one thinks about the adequacy of regulations to prevent problem gambling, and I have serious reservations on this point, one would think that for regulation to work the resources have to be adequate. The resources currently are not, but the conclusion to the report reads:
We are satisfied from our preliminary discussions with the Consultants and with the Minister that we will be able to achieve this in a very short space of time and within the existing budgetary framework.
It is a bit like another one of the loaves and fishes deals, is it not? It is aiming rather high.
We cannot take it that the problem will be solved by this reassurance. There is no way that we can be assured that interactive gambling will be well monitored. Therefore, we cannot allow more licences to be granted yet. That is why the amendment I have put to the motion is asking that we not rush into granting further authorisations until the regulatory regime is in place and working.
The minister has claimed that he is required to grant or deny licences or he could be facing the AAT to explain. A decision of this Assembly on the ground of consumer protection, public interest, et cetera, which is the way that the commission is supposed to exercise its activities by the legislation set up to guide how it works, would no doubt stand up to this kind of scrutiny.
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