Page 3500 - Week 09 - Thursday, 23 August 2018
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also give clubs a degree of certainty about the number of machines in the scheme and their forfeiture obligations into the future.
Arising from the consultation with the clubs industry the analysis report made several recommendations to improve the capabilities of our local clubs to diversify. We will establish a diversification support fund with monthly contributions from clubs based on the number of authorisations they hold. For the first three years those club contributions will be matched by government.
The fund will cover training of club boards for strategic planning, land and development studies. Importantly, it will also be available to workers in the industry. The government recognises that changes to any industry must take account of the impact on working people, and we will give them a voice in this process. There will be union representation on the governing board of the diversification fund. Workers will be able to apply for support and training to improve their skills.
Earlier this week I announced that we will be improving our gambling code of practice. We will ensure that the examples of courageous people like Professor Laurie Brown and others serve as a foundation for stronger, more robust protections. A key component of those changes will be to expand training and make that training better suited to minimising gambling harm. The Gambling and Racing Commission has already been updating the existing training program to make sure that it is consistent with a public health approach. It is clear that we have evidence to support doing more.
The workers who are responsible for carrying out these functions will be supported with a new training package that gives them the connections and the knowledge they need to be secure in taking a harm-minimisation approach to their jobs. We will be asking workers in our clubs to exercise greater responsibility to protect against gambling harm, and so it is only fair that we provide them with the resources to do so confidently and in a secure working environment.
I will be discussing these proposed changes with workers, clubs, academic experts and community representatives, including those with lived experience of gambling harm at the next gaming machine harm reduction roundtable. This is being planned for the end of September, and participants will receive invitations shortly. I will bring forward legislation and updates to the code before the end of this calendar year as a result of those consultations.
The final element to our comprehensive set of gambling industry reforms I will discuss today is about community contributions. Consultation has recently closed on an options paper circulated by my directorate, and I thank those who took the time to engage with the options paper and outline their views about how the scheme could work to best to serve the community.
The contributions scheme was designed to ensure that our broader community and not just members of clubs benefit from the social licence given to clubs to operate gaming machines. There has been a scare campaign about the intentions of the government. We engaged in a genuine consultation and we have definitively ruled out any question of reducing the existing community contributions amount of eight per cent.
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