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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 590 ..

However, I was, along with other members, concerned that women’s sport was being put ahead of valuable community programs delivered to other disadvantaged groups in our community, and those concerns remain just as valid now. It appears that the incentive scheme introduced did help address the large discrepancy between the amount donated to men’s sport and the amount going to women’s sport. However, it did not deal with the issue of whether the balance between sporting contributions and non-sporting contributions was right. I do not think it is, but I also do not think that that problem is going to be fixed today. So I support the provisions of the government’s bill to continue the women’s sport incentive scheme indefinitely, but I flag that we do need to revisit the problems with the community contributions scheme more widely.

The question of whether businesses other than those operating on a non-profit basis should be granted gaming machine licences was also debated extensively last June in response to Mr Stefaniak’s Gaming Machine (Allocation) Amendment Bill. As members may recall from my speech on that bill, I am concerned that the massive growth of large non-profit clubs has put many small businesses out of business. As I said at the time, I was not convinced that two machines in a warren of poker machines in a non-profit club would do less harm to the community than two machines in a hotel or tavern where players are in clear view of other patrons and bar staff and surrounded by people doing things other than gambling.

Although there is still an equity issue in denying class C machines to for-profit businesses, it is possible that a slightly lower level of overall community harm may result from restriction of for-profit businesses to just class B machines. New class B licences allocated must come from within the existing cap of 5,200 machines, which is currently overwhelmingly accounted for by the class C machines that cause greater losses to problem gamblers per machine. So, whilst continuing to harbour concerns about the impact of gaming machines on the ACT community, I am willing to support this part of the bill.

I wholeheartedly support the amendments from the government in relation to harm minimisation when assessing applicants for gaming machine licences. It is proper that new applicants for gaming machine licences should be required to complete a social impact assessment prior to the grant of a licence. I am only sorry that there is no renewal process for existing licences that would require the provision of a similar social impact assessment. I hope this new step gets licensees to take their harm minimisation obligations seriously and I look forward to seeing the content of the government’s guidelines when they become available so that we can see exactly what information will be required.

I turn to the government’s request that we extend the existing gaming machine cap for yet another year. The government’s election promise to deliver a new gaming machine act has been extremely slow in coming to fruition, and I notice that this time we are being asked to delay the expiry of the cap until after the election. In the meantime, we have a Gaming and Racing Commission that lacks the power it needs to properly protect the community from the adverse effects of problem gambling. Poker machine licences are continuing to be released in perpetuity, with no ability for that application to be reviewed, and the commission is unable to remove inappropriate machines from venues.

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