Page 5554 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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figure. But it is somewhere between $2 million and $4 million. If it is only $2 million, Ms Hunter wants to take $1.2 million of that away. And the reforms that Mr Corbell is putting forward in terms of liquor licensing I am told will equate to about $600,000 with $200,000 oncosts. So we are talking about $800,000. There is $2 million. If the profit range is at the lower mark, you have just wiped out the entire profit of the club sector in the ACT. And do you know what Ms Hunter said? “The impact of the change we are proposing is not significant.”
I would like to draw members’ attention to the annual report of the Tuggeranong Vikings. In the words of the chief executive, and I read from the report:
I am pleased to be able to report a surplus of $40,000 for the 2009/10 financial year, under the current circumstances, a positive if not brilliant effort.
Let us work out what the impact of Ms Hunter’s bill will be on the Vikings and apportion some of the costs that Mr Corbell is seeking to impose upon the club sector. The answer is simply this: Vikings currently have about 14 per cent, through their five venues, of the poker machines in the ACT. Fourteen per cent of Ms Hunter’s $1.2 million is $168,000. Ms Hunter’s bill takes the Vikings into the red. That is the effect. That is not significant? Just remember: “This is not a significant impact.”
This is not to decry the impact of poker machines and problem gambling. But we need to be aware of what we are voting for here today. What it means is that, when you add in Mr Corbell’s increased fees, which for an organisation like the Vikings might be $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000, you are putting the Vikings on the wrong side of the balance sheet by about $150,000. The Vikings in 2010 declared a $40,000 profit. In 2009 it was $1,066,000. Six years ago it was $3,640,000.
The club sector is a very valuable sector to our community—and we all appreciate the $15 million-odd in the last year that it put into community contributions. But you are now about to force that sector closer to the edge in very difficult times. We have got huge increases in the cost of living. We have got rates going up through the banks. We have got the unknown, undefined, uncosted effect of the Gillard-Wilkie proposals. We know that there is an extra $1.2 million coming out of the sector under the Hunter proposal. Mr Corbell’s costs will be something like $600,000 to $800,000, and we have just had Mr Barr announce a one per cent increase in the community contribution and he will leave the 0.75 in place as 0.6—so again more impact on the club sector without any thought as to the viability of that sector.
Let me read from the report of the treasurer of the Vikings. This is just one club. Members need to go and read the annual reports of some of the clubs in the ACT. Some, for the first time in their history, have not declared a profit at all in the ACT. The cash cow that people think clubs are is not quite real. The treasurer’s report for Vikings states:
For the past 3 years I have highlighted the difficult regulatory and economic environment we operate in. This trend continues and is showing no signs of improving in the foreseeable future. The global financial crisis may have passed but there are emerging concerns that the pace of recovery is beginning to stall which is placing pressure on consumer confidence and therefore revenue levels
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