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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2666 ..

all the details. My office did receive extensive briefing and assistance in understanding the implications of the different parts.

The key features of note are new rules for the operation of gambling machine licensed clubs in general, clubs’ decisions about poker machines and increased requirements for social impact assessments in regard to applications for additional machines and applications to relocate premises. The cap, which has been temporary, is to be put into legislation without a sunset clause. However, this new section allows the minister, after recommendation by the commission, to change the cap by a disallowable instrument. I have some amendments to this section.

There are new conditions on licences. There is an allowance for a central monitoring system, although I understand from the commission that they are considering the costs and benefits of this, and there is not yet a proposal to launch into developing it. Allowance for cashless gambling is similarly included. There is scope for some changes to warning notices; a ban on any external signs advertising gaming machines—although advertising on television remains a matter to be regulated by the mandatory code; and the removal of the requirement, introduced late at night in the dying days of the last Assembly, that political contributions by clubs be matched by additional community contributions.

I have a few comments to make on the social impact assessment provisions. When this was introduced in the last bill, which—unwisely, I believe—expanded the types of venues for poker machines, the details had not been finalised. Guidelines governing the social impact assessment process have now been prepared. The social impact assessment is prepared by the proponent. The guidelines for social impact assessments currently require the use of published data and for the assessment to provide readily checkable facts. For example, it must include a map showing a five-kilometre radius around the venue and identifying other relevant premises. “Relevant premises” are not defined, but examples are given as nearby residences; businesses or shops; other gambling outlets; schools, sporting and community facilities; and places of worship.

Population and an estimate of the average income of people within a five-kilometre radius are also required, among other things. The focus on the five-kilometre radius, as I understand it, is because of research indicating that proximity is an important factor in whether people, including people who have problems with their gambling, gamble on poker machines. As we receive the results of local research work on that kind of question and on the factors important to different cultural groups in our community, it is important that they are factored into the social impact assessments and/or into the commission’s consideration of social impact assessments. It will be interesting to see the quality of these assessments.

At this stage it is also worth mentioning a slightly different perspective to problem gambling. Mark Dickerson, holder of the Tattersall’s Chair of Psychology at the University of Western Sydney, in a submission to IPART’s “Review of gambling harm minimisation measures”, reference 03/308, last October, drew on new evidence to argue for rethinking the isolation of problems associated with gambling to people with a particular pathology and the resulting emphasis on responsible gambling. Rather, he argues, we should be looking at consumer protection. Mark Dickerson wrote:

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