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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2684 ..

That amendment No 4 be agreed to.

Question resolved in the negative.

Clause 35, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 36 agreed to.

Clauses 37 to 43, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Proposed new clauses 43A and 43B.

MS DUNDAS (5.39): I move amendment No 7 circulated in my name to insert new clauses 43A and 43B. [see schedule 2 at page 2756].

This amendment relates directly to gaming machines with note acceptors and states that it would be a condition of the licence that a licensee must not operate a gaming machine with a note acceptor on the licensed premises. I am moving this amendment as a harm minimisation measure.

One of the things that so many of the surveys, so many of the discussions and so much of the work that has been done with problem gamblers have shown is they would like it to be harder for them to lose big amounts of money in one go. Being able to put $50, $20 or $10 into a machine and lose it all in one go is one of the problems that they experience in terms of actually trying to walk away from a machine. They get sucked into putting more and more notes through a machine and they have the ability to lose far more money in the same amount of time than they would have been able to lose if they were just putting in 20c coins or $1 coins.

That is something that has been shown by a number of studies that have come forward. As a simple harm minimisation measure, I have moved that we not allow gaming machines with note acceptors to be operated in the ACT. There are exemptions to that in relation to what is currently happening in the ACT, but I think that that is something we need to work towards so that we no longer have this situation.

It is not necessarily going to happen that somebody will go up and get hundreds of dollars worth of coins. They would be embarrassed to be walking around with that amount of money in coins just to put through a poker machine. But it is quite easy to pull out a wad of notes and stick them through a poker machine. For harm minimisation, to protect those with gambling problems, I urge members of this Assembly to support this amendment and not make it easier for those with gambling problems to lose more money more quickly.

MS TUCKER (5.42): This amendment seeks to prohibit the use of note acceptors. The Greens support this amendment. For reasons I discussed in the in-principle stage, removing or limiting note acceptors would be a useful harm reduction strategy. I flag with members that, when the regulations are tabled, I will move for the introduction of a cap of $20 on note acceptors. That would be in addition to the limit on the types of notes that can be put into a machine to $20 notes. I am supportive of this amendment.

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