Page 1671 - Week 05 - Thursday, 8 May 2008
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funding of a political party. The Liberal Party has had various organisations that have been organisations of like-minded people who fund the Liberal Party, both federally and locally. The Greens have people who come together and raise money for the Greens. But it is quite different when you have a licensed club. With a licensed club—although it might be called the Labor Club—a lot of people go there and avail themselves of the facilities, probably not realising that when they put money through the poker machine in the Labor Club in one of its various iterations around town they are in fact funding the ALP.
I had to have words with my son the other day when I discovered that he was a member of the Labor Club. I said, “Tom, I have got concern about this.” He said, “It’s all right, mum. I never put money in the poker machines; I just go there because the beer’s cheap.” In that case, perhaps the Labor Club is subsidising the Dunne family—so long as he does not ever put money in the poker machine.
In some of the provisions proposed by the Labor Party today we are seeing an opportunity for them to make it easier to receive donations from the Labor Club and disguise the fact that they will be receiving electoral funding on the backs of people who have a gambling problem. If amendments pass here today, there will no longer be provision to account for proceeds that go to the Labor Party—or any other organisation that has a licensed club that supports it and that was an entity before the Electoral Act. They will no longer have to account for the proceeds of gambling or the proceeds of the sale of alcohol.
This is the main means by which the Labor Party receives funding—substantial amounts of funding. Hundreds of thousands of dollars that go to the Labor Party come to the Labor Party out of poker machines. The poker machines are fed by the residents of Belconnen, Civic, Charnwood—one of the most disadvantaged areas in the ACT—and Weston Creek. All of that money out of the Labor Club premises across town eventually makes its way into the coffers of the ACT ALP.
If anyone thinks that I am making too much of this, they just have to look year after year at the list of people who are on the board of the Labor Club. The former Treasurer of the ACT at various stages was a member of the board. The current secretary of the ALP is a member of the board. A range of former members of this place and current members of this place at various stages have been members of the board. In addition to that, at the moment there are current candidates for the ALP who are members of the board. This is the organisational wing of the ALP in lock step with the poker machine industry, obtaining proceeds for elections in lock step with the poker machine industry. It may as well just take out shares in Aristocrat; it would be much more honest.
This is why the Liberal opposition will be opposing large slabs of the legislation brought forward today.
The other concern we have is this. As with most of the bill that we will be debating tonight, we have essentially War and Peace in the form of amendments. We have from the Attorney-General—admittedly they were dropped on Tuesday, and we were supposed to debate this on Tuesday—15 pages of amendments. I understand that
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