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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 3682 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

This is part of the core activity of those clubs. As we discussed this morning, and I think that we are starting to get general consensus on it, the operation of that sporting activity which filters through the local grade competitions to junior sport is part of the community, part of community activity. That is what the Royals football club was set up to do. That is what it focuses its efforts on. Those who have taken any interest in either rugby union or the club industry will know that Royals has been sailing very close to the wind. It has had administrators appointed in its history. It has had virtually half of its debt written off by a bank in order that it might survive and it is now surviving.

A number of other clubs serving the community are also sailing very close to the wind. The Canberra South Bowling Club virtually had to go into an amalgamation with the ACT Brumbies in order to survive. The ageing population around inner south Canberra were going to lose the facility that it provided for them because they really did not have a lot of change for spending across the bar or playing pokies. The club has made a business arrangement and become partners with the ACT Brumbies.

The Ainslie Football Club, as you can see, turns over a huge amount of money. It is one of the leading Australian rules football clubs. A former player, James Hird, captained the premiership side in the AFL this year. It is one of the leading grade clubs in the ACT and, again, it runs its support right down into the juniors. For this particular category to be omitted is, in fact, to withdraw considerable support from the sport that is carried on. That is where the juniors start. They come under the club's umbrella and continue in sport. That is definitely part of the community. We might argue about politics, but that is definitely part of the community and the essence of why these clubs were formed in the first place.

We can see there the Hockey Centre giving $10,000 to one of its bodies. We know that the government has given considerable support to hockey. I have been involved in encouraging some of that support for hockey because of what the Hockey Centre in general has done. When we are represented by the Powell sisters in winning Olympic gold medals, we all get something out of that. The sport gets something out of it and the community gets something out of it. I think that this exclusion has to go. This legislation, possibly accidentally, is going to the core of why some of those clubs exist and their contribution to the fabric of the community. I commend this amendment to the house.

MR HUMPHRIES (Chief Minister, Minister for Community Affairs, Attorney - General and Treasurer) (6.22): I think I can allay Mr Quinlan's concerns about the effect of proposed new paragraph 60A(f) by advising him that the reference to another club in that paragraph is not a reference to any organisation which happens to be a club in the lay sense of a sports club or a club in a loose sense. It is a reference to another licensed club, so it only covers arrangements where one licensed club makes a reciprocal arrangement with another licensed club.

I will give an example of what I mean. This is a way in which a club or clubs might get around the requirement to make community contributions. Supposing club A wants to provide a benefit to its members. Under proposed new paragraph 60A(a), a club cannot count a contribution to its own members as a contribution to the community. That is fair enough; we have agreed to that. But it notices that club B wants to provide a similar benefit to its members, which, similarly, does not count as a community contribution, so what happens is club A makes a donation to club B's members and club B makes

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