Page 2818 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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If we are not going to address the root causes, we are just faffing around, protecting the existing monopoly, particularly the Labor club monopoly, which of course supports the Labor Party.
We need to stop vilifying the clubs, particularly here in the ACT, because we do not have the sort of coverage that they have, particularly, in New South Wales and Victoria, where everywhere you go there are poker machines in the pubs and hotels. We have an industry that has been responsive. Indeed, the industry probably now puts more into addressing problem gaming than the government does. The government, depending on what numbers you use, gets well over $30 million of revenue from this but spends at best half a million dollars—probably less: probably $300,000 or $400,000—on addressing the problem.
One of the reasons for taxation is to cover the impacts of the industry that you are legislating for. Money from motor vehicle registration and taxes on vehicles et cetera we would put back into road safety, road maintenance et cetera. But the government takes this enormous lump of money from the clubs and puts very little back into addressing the root cause of the problem. And that is what needs to happen. The government needs to have a good look at itself. Instead of trying to legislate for aspiration, which is pretty much useless, it should be making sure that it addresses the cause and gets on with fixing the problem.
What the committee has recommended through recommendations 1 through 5 is that some of the bill perhaps should go forward. What we need to do is set up a system that allows the trading and set up a system that allows relocation. We need to have a trading system that initially runs for a two-year period. But within that first two years, in the first 12 months, we need to come back and detail a system that would work long term, looking at the following principles: transfers between clubs; relocations within club groups; and transfer and trading between existing clubs and/or new clubs, which are not necessarily part of a club group. Let us make sure we get something right and something solid and then take it from there.
Recommendation 7 is to delete the aspirational clause and the cap of 4,000. There was no science behind setting the cap at 4,000. No-one could give us a logical reason why it should be 4,000; it was just a number plucked out of the air that I expect probably looked pretty good to the minister in a press release, but it bears no relation to reality because the work was not done. So the committee says to get rid of clause 12 until the work is done.
We go on further to say, in recommendation 6, that the government should set up an inquiry and report quite quickly, that it should review the cap. Indeed, Mr Quinlan, in his review, said, “Let’s review the cap.” That should commence immediately and the government should report on its progress by the second sitting in August.
Recommendations 8, 9 and 10 look at the withdrawal limit of $250. Some of the clubs have very small numbers of poker machines and do not rely on the poker machine trade as much as other clubs. For instance, the Rugby Union Club in Barton said that they make a substantial amount of business out of the ATM being in their building—
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