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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4298 ..

taken and worked out a balanced approach, an approach that will not cripple the club industry but will introduce a significant raft of harm minimisation measures.

It is naive of Ms Dundas to be saying that some of this change would not be onerous. It would help if she understood the club industry and addressed the question of whether we actually want to outlaw it and change the community structure or whether we want to take a balanced approach to living with gambling and making sure that the proceeds of a major slice of gambling in the territory are folded back into the community one way or another—through the club services and through the community contributions. Mr Stefaniak mentioned the community contributions. They are just the tip of the iceberg of what clubs spend in the provision of services.

Just go and ask some of the people who frequent, say, the Southern Cross Club. It provides all sorts of activities for people of all ages on a regular basis and, at the same time, provides a reasonable, economic catering service. It is part of our community. If you want to kill it, stand up and say so; otherwise, let’s be reasonable and rational about how we treat the clubs.

MS TUCKER (11.06), in reply: I wish to respond to a couple of points that have been made, particularly about amendments 1 and 4. Mr Stefaniak spoke about what happened in Queensland. I discussed that in my presentation this morning and I am certainly well aware of what happened. I think that the bottom line here is that, if we were to have an impact on problem gambling, it is absolutely clear that the revenue of clubs would drop. That is the reality of the situation. The evidence is there to show how much of their revenue comes from problem gamblers.

You just cannot have it both ways and say, “We care about problem gambling, but we do not want to see a drop in the revenue of clubs.” I think that the IPRT report erred on the side of caution to protect the clubs’ revenue rather than on the side of caution for consumer protection. For the information of members who want to know about evidence, I will read from the report of the Productivity Commission on Australia’s gambling industry. It states:

It should not be assumed that all problem gamblers spend a large amount, or that heavy gamblers are problem gamblers. Indeed, the Commission’s survey suggests that 60 per cent of gamblers outlaying more than $4,500 a year are not problem gamblers. Even so, the data suggests strongly that problem gamblers are much more prevalent amongst big spenders than among light spenders. The average expenditure per gambler tends to climb with a higher assessment of their gambling problem.

Those with severe problems (as defined using the Dickerson approach described in chapter 6) account for the majority of spending by problem gamblers. For example, it is estimated that this group accounts for about one-third of spending on gaming machines and one-quarter of spending on racing.

Other international studies have also found that problem gamblers account for a significant share of expenditure.

The report goes on to detail the data from other countries. As I have just said, in the 2001 ACT survey it was found that problem gamblers accounted for 37.3 per cent of gambling expenditure.

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