Page 3718 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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machines available. Consequently, when machines do become available, possibly months or even years after the commission’s consideration of such an application, the applicant’s circumstances may have changed considerably.
The amendments to section 10 of the act provide that when there are no gaming machines available for allocation the commission decides on the number of machines to allocate when machines become available. The commission is also provided with the explicit power to base its decision on updated information from the applicant. This will be a fairer and more equitable system that will improve the operations of this section of the act.
A further issue addressed in the bill is the clarification that the commission, in considering an application for additional gaming machines, should consider the actual use of gaming machines in the club as well as the number of club members. This will ensure that machines are allocated only where there is sufficient demand or need and not just on member numbers.
The bill also enhances the eligibility criteria for gaming machine attendants, technicians and suppliers of gaming machines. If an applicant has been refused an approval because they provided false or misleading information, or if someone has had their approval cancelled under the act’s disciplinary provisions, the person cannot reapply for their licence for a period of 12 months. These amendments protect the integrity of the licensing system and ensure that only eligible persons are approved.
Finally, the bill introduces a new section that prohibits gaming machines from being visible outside club premises. This enhances existing provisions that prevent external signage from advertising gaming machines. It makes sense to also prohibit gaming machines themselves from being visible from outside the licensed premises. This will prevent people making a spur-of-the-moment decision to gamble when they see machines. Importantly, it will also prevent persons under the age of 18 from seeing gaming machines and being encouraged to undertake the activity.
This amendment bill provides a number of small but significant changes to the Gaming Machine Act which will enhance its operation and clarify a number of issues for licensees and the gaming machine regulator. I thank members for their contributions to the debate.
There are a couple of issues relevant to this bill or to this area of policy that I might just touch on before concluding. One is to acknowledge that this bill quite patently and deliberately seeks to encourage further contributions by the ACT club industry to problem gambling initiatives to deal with harm minimisation, education and other policies, mechanisms, proposals or projects that might deal in the first instance with education around the impacts of problem gambling—things that clubs themselves can do or other providers of gambling across the board might do to address issues around the attractiveness of gambling, education around the dangers and, of course, at the end of the day, assistance in dealing with an addiction to gambling.
There is no doubt that those people within our community that identify, or we identify, as having a major gambling problem or addiction do for themselves, and in many
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