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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1423 ..
MR BERRY (continuing):
Sidewalk card games are both illegal and fraudulent for some very good reasons:
The players know one another and have divided Times Square into areas. The players work together. The games are not spontaneous.
The dealers are not alone ... They work in racially integrated teams, men and women, people in business suits, and informal dress.
A person in the crowd, often nicely dressed, will "play" and win, convincing the public that they too, can win. They can't.
The dealer will sometimes let a player win a little amount in order to rope him/her into betting higher amounts. Sometimes, when they see the wallet or purse come into the open, they will grab it and everyone will run.
Pick Pockets work the crowd around these cardboard box 3 card monty games.
And if by some fluke someone wins, the "lucky" winner is often followed and mugged.
The hand is quicker than the eye ... these are pros.
That tells us that the full monty budget could be something that we do not want to be involved in. In my view, the budget is a three-card monty budget and we have something to watch out for.
MS TUCKER (6.24): I just want to acknowledge briefly that the motion on National Sorry Day was not able to be debated earlier today and we will not have another opportunity before the day has passed. The National Sorry Day Committee has invited the whole Australian community to join them in the Journey of Healing. The journey has three main elements: Recognition, by inviting local communities to discover and portray the history of the relationship between non-Aboriginals and the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in their region; secondly, commitment to implementing the 54 recommendations of the Bringing them home inquiry; and, thirdly, unity by bringing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Aboriginal people together, as happened on Sorry Day last year, to listen to each other. I will be participating in some of the events organised under the umbrella of the Journey of Healing and I commend the events to other members of the Assembly.
On a practical and local level, the Journey of Healing organising committee will be consulting local indigenous, government and community organisations to determine what local progress has been made in implementing the recommendations of the Bringing
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