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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 7 Hansard (4 June) . . Page.. 1816 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The micro-clubs, conversely, are capable of being exempted from the provisions of this legislation altogether. From recollection, a number of small clubs already are exempt on a year-by-year basis. Their needs are not relevant in this situation either.

The clubs that will take advantage of this arrangement are almost certainly the reasonably small clubs that claim that the payment of 6 per cent-or 7 per cent, as it is going to become on 1 July-of their net gaming machine revenue to community organisations is a burden. They cannot afford to do that any longer. They do not wish to contribute at that level and presumably would like to take advantage of an arrangement which means that they can satisfy their legal requirements by paying less. Instead of paying, say, $1,000 to the community, they need pay only $750 to the community. It so happens that to be able to do so they need to pay that money into women's sport.

The opposition supports increased payments to women's sport. It is an area which is clearly neglected by current contributions from this source. In general, women's sport does not receive the attention it should from sponsors and supporters in the community. The phenomenon of men's sport dominating the available dollars floating in the system is true in this area, as it is elsewhere in Australia.

But to achieve this goal by depleting the total amount of community organisation contributions is not appropriate. A better system would be to preserve the total amount paid to community organisations so that women's sport receives a larger, fairer share of the pie but not at the expense of other community organisations.

In effect, this bill takes money from the pockets of other community organisations and puts it into women's sport. That, I would argue, is not appropriate. The organisations that will take advantage of this are the smaller clubs that struggle to reach their targets at the moment. They will take advantage of this to pay less and therefore will presumably not fund organisations they have previously funded or, if they fund them, fund them to a lesser extent. It is hard to see how this can have an effect other than depleting the amounts that would otherwise go into community organisations as a whole.

The opposition has foreshadowed an amendment which provides that a different system should be in place. I will not speak about the amendment in length at the moment, but it requires that, as from 1 July, when the total proportion of net gaming machine revenue paid to community organisations rises from 6 to 7 per cent, half a per cent of that 7 per cent should be hypothecated into women's sporting organisations, as defined by the process which the government has outlined in its bill. If an organisation fails to do so, then they are deemed to have failed to meet their requirements and will have a taxation penalty to pay.

It is also possible, under our amendment, for a number of clubs to pool their obligations, so that if a number of clubs get together one of those clubs can focus on provision of funding to women's sport to satisfy the requirements of all the clubs, provided that half a per cent across the board is met. As I said, I will discuss the amendment in more detail when we get to the detail stage.

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