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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (22 August) . . Page.. 3186 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This bill will ensure that anyone in a club will be forced to stop gambling on a gaming machine during the hours when alcohol is not served. So it is essential that we are able to monitor the effects of the shut-down on the numbers of people gambling on machines and the money expended.

It may be that this measure will not have a real impact. Maybe there are better tools. But, based on a letter I have received from the Gambling and Racing Commission, which basically says they think there is a reasonable chance that they will be able to make an evaluation, and because of the very strong support for this bill from Lifeline, we are prepared to support it.

As I have said, I do not support the bill 100 per cent. I am sorry in some ways that we have not had an opportunity to see a better analysis from the Gambling and Racing Commission. The Gambling and Racing Commission has written to me and said-and it is important that Mr Humphries listens to this because I would like him to respond:

In the event that the Assembly passes Mr Rugendyke's Bill and the Commission is requested to assess the impact and effectiveness or otherwise of the restricted operating hours, properly conducted surveys and monitoring will be established. If necessary, external professional assistance may be sought to help in this process.

What I am asking Mr Humphries to do in this debate is to say that he will request that of the commission. I know that under the act you can make a request. I have had some difficulties before. But this bill does not specify that the Assembly requests the commission to do the work. I am prepared to support this bill if Mr Humphries can clearly state here and now that he intends to request the commission to do that evaluation. My support hinges on the undertaking that we are going to see an evaluation. Even though the commission has said that it is not 100 per cent sure that it will be able to come up with results which clearly show what the impact is, they feel that an evaluation might be useful.

I must say that one paragraph in the letter from the commission worried me a little bit. It says:

Subsequent to the discussions with Mr Rugendyke, the Treasurer has requested that the Commission gather some initial benchmarking data from clubs so that some comparisons could be made should the Rugendyke Bill be passed. The Commission has already commenced this task with activity being sampled at some clubs in the relevant early morning time periods.

Despite the Commission being somewhat conservative in committing to being able to draw specific or definitive conclusions from the data gathered on this issue-

so they are expressing some reservations about this-

Mr Rugendyke MLA was confident that if his proposal had an influence on the level of gambling activity then the Commission's analysis of gaming machine operations would be sufficient to detect such a trend.

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