Page 5556 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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annual cheques to the community groups. It does not work any longer. And, if the combined return of more than $600 million worth of assets is somewhere between $2 million and $4 million, the banks would not give you a loan because you would be a risk.
We know the clubs are businesses. But they are not for-profit businesses as we would normally think of businesses. But the problem is that that is how the banks will treat them. And this place needs to respect what the club sector do. The club sector have asked for certainty, and they have asked for this not to go ahead so that they can ascertain the full impact of all the reforms that they are facing. And that is not an unreasonable request.
I acknowledge that problem gambling will be there. But let us go to who funds problem gambling in the ACT and let us ask who are the beneficiaries of poker machines. The biggest beneficiary of poker machines in this place is the ACT government. More than $33 million they got last year. You would expect, therefore, the government to be the biggest spender on problem gambling, but they are not. The club sector is. The government last year spent $360,000 on problem gambling programs. This government spent about one per cent of what they got out of poker machines.
Mr Hargreaves: Just because you’re bad business people, don’t blame us. I’m out of here.
MR SMYTH: I am shocked if John Hargreaves is calling clubs bad business people.
Mr Hargreaves: No, I didn’t. I called you people—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur ): Mr Hargreaves, please stop interjecting.
MR SMYTH: The club sector, which reaped a profit of somewhere between $2 million and $4 million, contributed $400,000 to remunerating the impact of problem gambling—more than the government did—and they did it voluntarily. They did it because they understand their social obligation, and that is on top of all the things they do either through regulation or, because they are obliged to, inside their systems in monitoring problem gambling and assisting problem gambling in-house, and I have not been able to get a costing on what that is.
The clubs are certainly doing a lot to assist with ameliorating the impact of problem gambling. Yet the Greens’ coalition partner, the Labor Party, are not called to account on this at all. They are allowed to take more than $33 million as a dividend from the gaming sector and they get away with spending one per cent. Where is the fairness, the justice and the equity in that?
There is a kind of social contract where we pay fees and charges and if there is a downside that is usually in the realm of government to fix. For instance, we all pay motor registrations, and part of the registration, we hear, is dedicated to road safety. That is fair and reasonable. But where are the government pulling their weight in this?
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