Page 615 - Week 02 - Thursday, 17 February 2005
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coming out and saying that he was wrong should be commended, by the way. The Associated Press report in which he was quoted also referred to a review of New York city statistics and interviews with bar patrons that found that employment and activity in restaurants and bars had increased.
I would like also to alert members to a research paper on the economic impact of smoke-free legislation on sales turnover in restaurants and pubs in Tasmania, published towards the end of last year, which found no overall negative economic impact on clubs, pubs and restaurants from the introduction of smoke-free policies.
Much is made of Canberra’s weather as opposed to Queensland’s, for example, which has taken a more enlightened view towards keeping tobacco smoke away from food and drink indoors and out—something that I appreciated in my recent visit there—with the suggestion that Canberra needs to have mostly enclosed spaces for smoking due to its colder weather. It would seem that the evidence from New York and Tasmania contradicts that stance.
Finally, I would like to address the issues of poker machines. There is an article in the December edition of Clubs Action, which describes a domino effect of smoking bans, incorporating a graph showing Victorian gaming revenue falling. That article also included the comment that the ACT, in common with other states, had not thought sufficiently far ahead to define an unenclosed public space. The article went on to say that considerable interaction since then had seen them arrive at an agreement with government for a definition that the clubs can work and live with.
It seems clear to me that, if the clubs believe that they can work and live by the 75 per cent rule, then they are aiming to maintain their poker machine revenue under the new scheme. Whether that will involve poker machines in large rooms with 25.1 per cent open space walls or ceilings or verandas with transparent windows outside the gaming room, so that poker machine players can at least stay in eye contact with their machines, is not quite clear. The unchanging presumption that maintaining poker machine revenue is the right of every club remains.
On the other side of the fence, however, I would like to remind the Assembly that problem gambling services have long advocated for entirely smoke-free gaming rooms. Most people who suffer from problem gambling do the damage on poker machines, and there are very many of those people who are addicted to pokies and who are also addicted to cigarettes. Those smokers are known to smoke even more intensively when on their machines.
Furthermore, people who really have a problem playing pokies are often entirely surprised by the passage of time. A key harm minimisation strategy with problem gambling is to ensure regular breaks away from the machines, which gives people a moment to consider their actions and offers an opportunity for people to go home or get on with the rest of their lives. Who knows, they might even go over and buy a drink.
If, through the strict imposition of smoke-free gaming places which required players to lose touch with their machines when they were smoking, we lessen the destructive impact of problem gambling and limit their consumption of cigarettes, surely that would be a good thing. I do not believe that this government should accept the argument that a
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