Page 3599 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 27 October 2015
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gaming machine revenues. But then it says there is a process to move away from that and that we support that process. The last one is very important. I will read it because it deserves to be on the record in the debate:
That support for the diversification of community clubs’ revenue base must be commensurate with practical and achievable diversification strategies that also retain the community benefit of the community clubs model.
It is important that we get the balance right. It will take some contribution from the community through the government and possibly fee concessions and other tax concessions. What we have achieved in the 46 recommendations is consensus. The disagreement is largely on whether it should have been $250, $800 or $1,000—whatever the number was. It is quite clear that there is consensus about the path forward and I thank members for that. Getting five people in a room to agree is difficult at the best of times. Getting five MLAs from three different parties to agree on such a vexed issue was always going to be very interesting.
I think that what we have come up with is reasonably balanced. It is not all for the clubs; there is some impost on the clubs. There is the potential for a national approach. The numbers on input and spin rates should be national. It should not be something the ACT does alone. The potential for all the clubs to be linked electronically will be difficult for some, but there is, I think, a real commitment to make this happen. There was a real commitment to try to present to the government some options on what they could do. The recommendations are diverse. We cover everything from helping the community sector by having a process in which you can identify problem gambling all the way through to: how do you address water issues? That shows just how diverse and wide the issues are. The key findings are very important. They give you a nice context for the recommendations.
As has been pointed out—and again I did not get to it in my first speech—I am very grateful that members who did not agree with the majority of the committee chose to put that in as a footnote. It is a reasonable way to do it. There is no dissenting report. I will not say it is without dissent, but largely it is a tripartisan report with large amounts of support from all the committee members. If members read the footnotes in the section where all the recommendations are you will see how some of the votes went.
I would just like to stress that there was goodwill on all of these issues. We really did have quite long debates. We had as many private meetings as we did public meetings. That shows you the length and the intensity of the process. The fact that they were printing the report this morning because there was still material coming in late yesterday shows how long and involved the process has been.
There are a number of appendices at the rear, the standard ones—who came and the submissions that were received. There is some interesting work there through the gaming and racing commission. A summary of the ACT gaming prevalence study shows a slight decline in the number of problem gamblers. But I think we need to be wary of that. We need to be aware that one problem gambler who is hurting himself or herself and their family is one too many, but there is a little bit of hope there. There is
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