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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 3698 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The Labor Party said they did not have anything to offer them. I might say that we did labour over the issue of the establishment of a casino in the ACT, and there was something like a 20 - year agreement under which there would be no casinos in the ACT. That was quite acceptable to all at the time, but I think the casino got a little bit confused between 20 years and 20 minutes, and that is about how long it took the Liberals to change their minds.

My concern here is that there are levels of disclosure under this legislation that will never uncover what Casino Canberra got out of the $15,000. I trust that one day we will find out. We will get a version of it, I expect, from Mr Humphries shortly, but who knows.

This is, as has been said by many, merely an attack on the Labor Party. As I have said, we can cope with that as we will cope with any other attacks on the Labor movement, one way or another. However, I wish those that were supporting the attack on the Labor Party would be honest with themselves, and with everybody else in the ACT, when it comes to the issue of disclosure. Tell us.

This is one we can see. It is about as plain as the nose on your face. Casino Canberra gives $15,000, but the Labor Party gets nothing and gives nothing to the casino, except our assertion that we will stick with the original agreement. There will be a review in 20 years if we have our way but, in the meantime, the Liberals who supported the original casino agreement have changed their position. They have changed it to "we support poker machines in the casino".

I will come back to something Mr Moore said. He said that the licensed clubs have been given this generous support for the establishment of poker machines in their clubhouses, and so on. Licensed clubs were here a long time before that was ever given to them, but what Mr Moore is very careful not to say is that the conditions are fairly tight. These are not the same conditions that Mr Moore wanted to apply to the pubs and hotels, because he was prepared to let them have poker machines without the same conditions that apply in licensed clubs.

In a licensed club you have to be a member of the club or an accredited visitor to get near the poker machines and the benefits of the club. There are conditions that go with the clubs' control of these poker machines. It is not something about which the government just said, "Look, here are a couple of poker machines. You can have them. Go for your life." The conditions are quite strict.

So, Mr Moore is speaking nonsense in relation to this generous monopoly that has been provided to the clubs. Yes, it is a monopoly, because it provides a level of security for poker machine gambling in the ACT, and rightly so, and I do not want to see it spread. I am against the spread of poker machines into the community.

Mr Humphries: I am not surprised. Of course you would be against it - you have a lot of benefit from it at the moment.

MR BERRY: Well, for other principled reasons, not for the $15,000, Mr Humphries. There is the difference.

Mr Humphries: No, it is much more in your case. It is $300,000 in your case.

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