Page 2641 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 25 September 2007
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To make it worse, people who are addicted to pokies are typically the least able to afford it. The Australian Bureau of Statistics household expenditure survey reports that the 40 per cent of households with the lowest incomes reported spending around 0.9 per cent of their income on gambling compared with around 0.5 per cent for higher income households. So what should we do about it? The Greens suggest that it seems logical that 30 per cent of the revenue—that is, $33,912,619 which comes from problem gamblers—should go back to the community and be particularly targeted at helping those with a problem. Currently only seven per cent of net gaming machine revenue must go towards one of four categories of social development: charitable and social welfare, sport and recreation, non-profit activities and community infrastructure.
On 16 November last year, Mr Stanhope, as Treasurer, tabled the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission’s annual report into community contributions made by gaming machine licensees. The paper was noted, with no further debate or discussion since taking place. I have looked at this report in detail and would like to draw the Assembly’s attention to some of its findings as they point to some very worrying trends in how these required contributions are being spent.
In particular, this report shows that, far from using their seven per cent contribution to support worthwhile charities and social welfare groups, the majority of Canberra’s clubs are channelling funds into sporting and recreational groups, which will often return a proportion of their profits to them. I am not saying that sporting and recreational groups are not worthy objects of this funding, but they are disproportionately represented.
In 2005-06 the ACT’s clubs gave away $12.5 million to groups throughout the community. This is a significant figure. The Chief Minister thought so. He issued a press release at the time of the report’s publication praising the clubs for their generous contributions. But if you look beyond the front page of this report to the breakdown on how this money was actually spent, our clubs look less generous.
As I have said, in the last financial year ACT clubs contributed $12.5 million to the community. Just over $1.5 million went to groups in the charitable and social welfare and non-profit activities categories. Around $135,000 went to women’s sport and just over $140,000 was spent on community infrastructure. Well and good, but these contributions add up to just $3,432,714, or a little over 10 per cent of the total money. So where did the other $9 million or so go? It went to groups in the sport and recreation category, groups which, while undeniably vital to the social fabric of our community, also bring some return to the clubs in the form of memberships and spending, et cetera.
To put it another way, where each club spent an average of $31,467 on charitable and social welfare, $28,000 on community infrastructure and $30,000 on non-profit activities, each club spent an average of $153,000-plus on sport and recreation. Over 70 per cent of the total contributions made by clubs in 2005-06 went to sport and recreation, with community and social groups sharing the remaining 30 per cent. Those are just average figures.
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