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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2675 ..

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MR QUINLAN: Mr Deputy Speaker, I was just saying that I think the cap is an unsophisticated way of managing. Maybe we need to investigate it further, if we do not get too rigid later in the way this legislation is applied, changing, for example, the taxation regime so that there is a cost of holding non-performing machines. At this stage, clubs that have machines that they do not need right now or that are not producing are just not going to give them up, because they do not know what the future is. Because they may need them in the future, they are going to hang onto them.

Maybe the taxation regime, if it is an A+BX formula with a standing cost and then a different rate of taxation, will change the motivation to keep machines. That may be one way. Another way may be just to review the throughput of machines. If they are not utilised, then they may be forfeited. There are ways we can bend our minds to controlling the number of machines other than the cap, which is a blunt instrument. I just put that in as an observation.

MR STEFANIAK (5.01): I have another interesting observation, Mr Treasurer. I can recall when the cap was first introduced and the discussions around it. It was actually introduced rather reluctantly but nevertheless seems to have served us fairly well to date. As you rightly say, fortunately, some clubs do go under and some machines are handed back and, some years down the track, we are still just under the cap. In regard to Ms Dundas’s motion, however, the Assembly is going to get lobbied whichever way it does it. We will not be supporting her amendment.

MS TUCKER (5.02): The Greens will be supporting Ms Dundas on this. This amendment relates to procedures for the commission in dealing with applications for machines that would bring the ACT over the cap. The procedure proposed in the bill for the commission is to advise the applicant that no machines are available and to give, essentially, a promissory note.

Ms Dundas’s amendment would change the procedure. Instead of the promissory note, the commission would simply advise the applicant that there are no available machines. Then the commission must not deal with the application until the gaming machines sought to be authorised under the licence, or amended licence, can be authorised without the maximum number being exceeded. Applications would, in any case, be dealt with in the order in which they are received. This system has the advantage of not raising expectations.

In response to Mr Quinlan’s comments, the basic reality is that we are oversupplied with poker machines in Canberra, and everyone acknowledges that. I am not saying, as the person who initiated the cap, that it is the most ideal situation to deal with the impact of having poker machines to the degree that we do in Canberra, but it is certainly one way to address it. I have yet to see an alternative suggestion from this government, or previous governments, to address the issue.

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