Page 2642 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 25 September 2007
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It gets worse when you delve into the club-by-club breakdown. Twenty-two of the 65 clubs gave more than 90 per cent of their required contribution to sporting and recreation. If sport is excluded, only five clubs contributed to community infrastructure at all and only six clubs contributed more than 10 per cent of their contribution to women’s sport, despite a generous incentive plan which counts every $3 given in this category as $4.
Of course, it is not all bad and I would like to congratulate six clubs: the Akuna Club, Belconnen Bowling Club, Canberra Racing Club, National Press Club of Australia, Canberra White Eagle Club Inc and tradies at Woden, among others—to single out just a few—for giving the majority of their contributions to groups in the charitable and social welfare category. I note that the Canberra Southern Cross Club at Woden has recently announced that it will increase its community contributions to 20 per cent.
Of further concern are comparative figures from the past three years which show that, despite growth in gaming profits, community contributions as a percentage of profits have been falling, dropping by 4.6 per cent between 2003-04 and 2004-05 and a further 4.5 per cent between 2004-05 and 2005-06. Clubs are subject to government direction and the government, I believe, needs to ensure that community contributions actually contribute to the community and that more especially goes to tackling problem gambling.
We need to seriously address this problem, and giving more money to institutions like Lifeline, Care financial counselling, Gamblers Anonymous and others who help those with a problem is the best way to do it. We need to do something to help prevent more people from developing this addiction. The impacts of the disease are serious but, unlike many serious illnesses, there are simple and well-known initiatives that can be easily implemented to help cure it. (Time expired.)
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.09): Mr Speaker, there are many strands to this issue: the incidence of gambling, the number of poker machines in the ACT, the incidence of problem gambling, and research into problem gambling. The ACT ALP is gaining revenue from activities based on poker machines. To hear the Chief Minister, you would have thought that it was actually the Liberal Party that had started this debate and that it is the Liberal Party that has put clubs in the ACT at some sort of risk. The delusional elements of that are just astounding, given that it is the ACT Labor Party’s dependence—their absolute reliance—on the revenue that comes from problem gamblers that really is at the heart of this issue.
You only have to look at the words of Tim Costello, who said that the dependence on poker machine revenue meant it could not make the right decisions about gaming. Who was he talking about, Mr Speaker? He was talking about the ACT Labor government. He went on to say:
Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court show far greater moral leadership than Jon Stanhope. How can they get it, and someone who is elected to govern for all doesn’t?
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