Page 2934 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 15 August 2018
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Mr Parton’s motion also talks about excessive fees, charges and taxes and makes claims about the comparative tax rate for clubs in New South Wales. Of course, there are many ways to present these figures, and I have seen some very creative interpretations of these figures over time. But here are the figures quoted in Dr Livingstone’s recent report. The effective average rate of tax on gaming machine revenue in the ACT was 19.9 per cent in 2014-15. The average for all Australian jurisdictions was 29.9 per cent during the same period. In New South Wales it was 22.9 per cent and in Victoria it was 41 per cent.
It is also important to note that net gaming revenue in the ACT is calculated based on gaming machine revenue—that is, user losses—minus operating costs which are set at 24 per cent. In Victoria it is based on the net amount lost by poker machine users, with no allowance made for operating expenses. This means that in Victoria clubs must provide a contribution 37 per cent greater than that required for ACT clubs. This is not to suggest that clubs do not have a range of expenses, taxes and fees they must pay, but the reality is that the ACT gaming tax regime is no more onerous, and arguably is significantly less onerous, than similar regimes in other jurisdictions.
What we do know is that gaming machine revenue is decreasing as fewer people are playing poker machines, although the evidence suggests that the amount of harm from these machines is not decreasing. Dr Livingstone found that gambling harms are widespread across the ACT community and directly affect up to 16,000 people, about 4,400 of these directly at a serious to very serious level. The level of harm associated with gambling in the ACT is estimated to be close to that associated with harmful or dependent alcohol use and well in excess of that associated with cannabis dependency.
Figures from the ANU show that in 2014-15 people in the ACT spent $167.45 million on the pokies. Almost 20 per cent of adults played the pokies at least once in that period, with losses totalling nearly $38 million. Of these losses, 63 per cent came from people with at least some problem gambling symptoms. Twenty-eight per cent of losses came from people at moderate risk or people identified as problem gamblers. This means that $10.59 million was lost by people in the ACT with some level of gambling addiction. This is not a small or insignificant issue.
The fundamental dilemma that lies at the heart of this is that while we recognise the significant amount of benefit that many people in our community get through their community club activities, much of that benefit is funded by poker machine revenue which causes significant harm to other parts of our community. These harms are not addressed by the community contributions scheme, and I would argue that they are not completely offset by the contributions made under that scheme. That is where we need to bring a bit of sense and a bit of nuance to this discussion. Yes, the clubs do provide a range of supports to our community, but we cannot simply close our eyes to where that money comes from or the impact that it has in our community. To do so is dishonest, and it is not good enough for this place to simply ignore those consequences.
Community contributions are an acknowledgement that gambling imposes significant social, psychological, physical and emotional costs on the Canberra community. While we cannot always directly address all of these harms through the scheme, we
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