Page 1204 - Week 04 - Thursday, 26 March 2015
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Our community clubs employ thousands, provide a safe and inexpensive social hub for many in our community and provide a financial lifeline to many community groups and organisations. In the last financial year alone, clubs donated more than $12 million—I think it was closer to $12.7 million—in community contributions.
However, we also recognise that our clubs are struggling, and we have acknowledged that we need to secure the long-term financial viability of the community clubs sector so that the contribution that clubs make to both the economic and social wellbeing of our community can continue.
A number of community clubs have shown interest in pursuing redevelopment of their existing sites to assist in diversifying their income streams away from gaming machine revenue. The government supports this diversification.
In November last year, following a roundtable involving clubs, I announced the establishment of a community clubs task force. This task force is exploring ways that the government can assist community clubs to diversify their business models to enable continuing viability of their future operations. Most of this work will assess the potential redevelopment of club land. However, the task force will also consider ongoing improvements to the regulatory environment.
ClubsACT represents the clubs on the task force and will continue to play an important role in providing support to community clubs to navigate their way through the redevelopment process. It is my understanding that the task force met last Friday, and four clubs put some proposals forward for diversification and redevelopment. This task force provides a way for clubs to come together and have these issues addressed, because often they are in multiple areas of different government agencies.
In 2012 I signed a memorandum of understanding with ClubsACT, and we are continuing to work through that. Last year we settled on a comprehensive set of reforms as part of the gaming machine reform package. The first set of those reforms, including a comprehensive suite of red tape reduction measures, was passed by the Assembly late last year. The majority of these measures have already been or are in the process of being implemented. They include removal of gaming machine access registers, the extension of licensing approvals and allowing small clubs to pay their problem gambling assistance fund contributions on an annual basis in arrears.
This government is committed to the ongoing reduction of red tape and improvements in regulatory arrangements to ensure that businesses just get on with the job. The second tranche of legislation is expected to be introduced in the Assembly in May, in the next sitting, to realise the remainder of reforms that are contained in the package. That will include the introduction of a trading scheme and changes to taxation arrangements for revenue generated from gaming machines.
Whilst community clubs and gaming machines are covered by this, the presence of interactive gambling and online activities continues to grow. The community club sector, I believe, has already felt the impact of this. Further declines in club revenue are expected as people move away from the more traditional forms of gambling.
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