Page 4495 - Week 14 - Thursday, 1 December 1994
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It is no wonder that the three racing codes have written to us and to the Minister saying, "Please, do not change the percentages we are currently getting". I will leave my remarks on the Bill there. I intend to move some amendments later on and I will make some further comments then.
MS SZUTY (5.58): I must admit that when I saw this Bill it looked like one of those very simple straightforward Bills. I decided to give it fairly careful examination. From my point of view, the Bill is about giving the Minister flexibility in a couple of areas where he does not have it at the moment, but I think it is important to state that it is in a couple of areas where he does not have it at the moment. Basically, he is seeking flexibility in particular to alter the percentage of return that comes to the Territory, in the first instance, and to modify the percentage return that comes to the Racecourse Development Fund, in the second instance.
According to the Act, the Minister already has the capability to increase the percentage return to the Racecourse Development Fund if he so chooses, but not to decrease it. The situation with the racing clubs is that the Minister has the flexibility at the moment, and this Assembly can disallow an instrument Mr Lamont makes in relation to the racing clubs. I must admit that it took me some time to gather that information from reading the Minister's presentation speech. I went over it at quite some length before I fully understood what the legislation was intending to do. Mr De Domenico is right when he says that we do not really know at this stage what Tabcorp's intentions are. We know that they are seeking to be competitive in a number of areas where they have not been competitive to date, and ACTTAB quite rightly have approached the Minister and indicated that, should Tabcorp adopt these strategies in the future, ACTTAB would want to take advantage of them, for good reasons.
As a prelude to the Minister's closing remarks in principle on this Bill, I would like to raise the issue for him to address of how the disallowance provisions are going to work. I understand that the disallowance provisions currently exist in relation to the racing clubs, so I would appreciate hearing directly from him how the setting of the percentage by the Minister happens in relation to particular events and how this Assembly could effect some change as a result of supporting a disallowance motion in relation to it. The Minister might also extend his comments to how that will work in relation to the two areas where he does not have complete flexibility at the moment, that is, in relation to the return to the Territory and in relation to the return to the Racecourse Development Fund.
MR LAMONT (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Housing and Community Services, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (6.01), in reply: I thank both members for their comments. I will leave the major part of my comments until the amendments that have been circulated are moved by Mr De Domenico. In doing so, I indicate that those foreshadowed amendments basically exhibit both political naivety and, I would suggest, a naivety as to the way in which ACTTAB operates. This Bill proposes to ensure that ACTTAB can remain linked with Tabcorp for those race meetings that Tabcorp determines will have an altered or varied return to punters. At the moment, there is a standard return equated for all race meetings by the Tabcorp-ACTTAB arrangement. If as a marketing ploy Tabcorp determined, as they
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