Page 3869 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
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Mr Smyth brings forward an important matter today and it is interesting to reflect on exactly how much work is being done on this Thursday in relation to executive business. What we are actually doing here is Assembly business. We are debating whether or not there should be a reference to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in relation to a particular matter. It is interesting to reflect that again most of the day has been taken up not with executive business but with anything but executive business, because this executive has almost no business to deal with.
Mr Smyth’s important motion needs appropriate consideration and support because of the impact that the sale of a licensed club as a going concern would have on the whole concept of the community club organisation. Mr Smyth has on a number of occasions in this place talked at length about what the ethos of the community club movement is about and how the sale of a club as a going concern in this way for a substantial profit will be distributed. We do not quite know how, but certainly it will not be for the benefit of the thousands of members of the Canberra Labor Club Group.
That is an important matter. It should be looked into. I am constantly reminded of this, especially when there are large sporting events on the TV. You see the New South Wales clubs advertising themselves as community clubs and how it is about the community. The advertising takes place to the extent that for every person who walks through the door of the club the name changes from Fred’s club to Joe’s club to Karen’s club et cetera.
I think that it constantly reminds us about the anomaly that we have here in the ACT with the Canberra Labor Club Group being part of the so-called community clubs movement. I think that for a long time the community clubs movement has been a little uncomfortable about that association and it has come to a head here.
The issue in a sense really is not about the sale of the Labor club; it is about whether or not it is appropriate to sell a club as a going concern, and if you sell a club as a going concern, how you might go about that. It is clear in the legislation—Mr Smyth has pointed this out and I worked for the Treasurer who was the responsible minister when this legislation was put together—that no-one ever conceived of the possibility of selling a club as a going concern.
There are provisions which in a pinch account for and allow for the changing of hands of clubs that are in financial difficulties, and we have seen that on a number of occasions. The West Belconnen Warriors Rugby League Club, Western District Rugby Union Club, Canberra Royals Rugby Union Club, and a couple of others that do not quite so easily come to mind, have all changed hands because they were in financial difficulties and there was no profit essentially to be made from that transaction.
But no-one ever envisaged that we would be in a situation where a profitable, going concern organisation would want to wind itself up and sell itself on for profit. And no-one has ever envisaged how we would deal with that situation. We are breaking new ground in policy and this is why Mr Smyth has recommended, and the Canberra Liberals party room supports his move in this, that we should be actually looking at how we deal with this in policy terms.
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