Page 2644 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 25 September 2007
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taxation—which was brought forward by Mr Quinlan—the ACT Liberal Party opposed it. We are actually opposed to becoming less reliant on gambling taxation because we know about the ills.
As Mrs Dunne pointed out, we knew about this six, seven, eight, nine years ago, when we actually funded the chair of gambling studies at the ANU. We were fair dinkum. We said “Let’s get to the root cause of this problem. Let’s not say, ‘Ban them all and have blanket coverage.’ Let’s actually allow those that enjoy the use of a poker machine to continue to do so, but let’s us look after those poor souls who can’t control it. Let’s find out why and let’s do something constructive about it.” But, as pointed out by Mrs Dunne, there is now this doubt about the government support and the links to the chair of gambling at the ANU. Perhaps somebody from the government might like to answer what is happening in that case.
Mr Stanhope was quite pleased to quote the success of the Vikings—the Tuggeranong Valley Rugby Union and Amateur Sports Club, Mr Speaker, and he was right to do so. The Valley Vikings now control something like $55 million worth of assets on behalf of the community: bowling greens, a golf club, a football ground and the club facilities themselves. But what do the Vikings say about the government? Let us go to just the front page of their last annual report where Jim Shonk, the president, says:
The ACT Government hasn’t let us down again.
They have got form on this, Mr Speaker. He goes on:
In the face of the most serious downturn in club revenue in years, they have chosen to implement a rapacious and ill advised tax increase in the order of 17% effective from July 1st 2007.
I believe that this will prove fatal for a lot of struggling clubs. Vikings will survive, but again our capacity to do things in the community will suffer.
So what has the Chief Minister done? He has rewarded those that put money back into the community by picking on them and increasing their tax rate. What does the Chief Executive, Peter Webb, say? He talks about how the year has been, and he goes on to say:
On top of this, the coming year sees an ACT Government gaming machine tax increase of 17%, which will cost us the best part of another $1M.
Remember, Mr Speaker, that is a million dollars that does not go to the community. He goes on:
So in less than 3 years, we have been left $8M in the hole. Whilst we are obviously achieving efficiencies, which have covered a substantial part of this deficit, we are reaching the point where it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so …
So who is putting clubs in the ACT at risk, Mr Speaker? Jon Stanhope and his “squeeze them till they bleed” tax policies. What did the treasurer of Vikings say in the same article? At page 1 he says:
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