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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2682 ..

Australia, the only poker machines are in the casino and Western Australia does, in fact, have clubs. If there were a good case for increasing the limit, it could come back to the Assembly as a law change. While this provision in the bill requires a recommendation for change from the commission before the minister may make such a declaration, I believe that it would be better to have a firm cap. The only acceptable direction for the number of poker machines is down.

In the event of this amendment not being successful—I do not think that it will be from what I am hearing—acceptance of my next amendment would have an important effect on the clause as it stands in the bill. That amendment seeks to make an instrument increasing or decreasing the cap into an allowable disallowable instrument; that is, the instrument would not come into effect unless the Assembly had rejected a motion to disallow the instrument or the disallowance period had expired.

That is to avoid any complications in the case of a cap being raised, machines being allocated and the increase then being disallowed by the Assembly. It fits common administrative practices, I understand, but has the advantage of providing a legislative basis for delaying action until the change is certain. I think that this is a very sensible and non-controversial change and I hope that it will be supported.

My fourth amendment is, essentially, consequential upon the passage of my next amendment, but I will put the case here. I am proposing that the cap be reduced whenever a licence is surrendered to the commission. A licence would be surrendered when a club closes or possibly when the commission assesses that machines are being underutilised. I find it a slightly bizarre concept that, if they are being underutilised, it may be that they are being used but not in a harmful way, but it remains arguable at least that this indicates a smaller demand for poker machines. In response, it would make sense to reduce the cap by that amount.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (5.32): We will not be accepting these amendments. These amendments are, effectively, prohibition by stealth and, as I have said, I do not accept that prohibition is the answer. Amendment No 3, which is about the disallowable instrument and the timing of it, would in large part reverse the process we have. We have a process of regulation of disallowable instruments to allow from time to time sensible decisions to be made and I think that we should be consistent.

I really think that the Assembly should give some credit to the commission in the advice that they will give and the way that they will issue licences. They are not going to issue licences until they are certain that the machines are available. That is just a nonsense situation. I think that we can put that much trust in the commission that they are able to manage a process that will not cause silly outcomes such as approvals and then reversals of approvals because of inadequate numbers. Let’s be a little bit practical about how we set this up.

MR STEFANIAK (5.33): Mr Speaker, we certainly will not be supporting Ms Tucker’s amendment No 2, but I would like her and Mr Quinlan to address any real practical and legal problems with amendment No 3, because she is actually making it an allowable instrument, which, on the face of it, seems to have some merit.

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