Page 5977 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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case for the ACT government to contribute more appropriate resources to respond to problem gambling.
I repeat that I am disappointed that Ms Hunter has brought this bill on so prematurely. And I note that the minister said at the launch of the ANU prevalence study that we should not act hastily in responding to problem gambling issues. Yet this is exactly what the Greens are proposing, aided and abetted by the government. The government, I think, is afraid of being left out. Of course we all saw the minister’s rushed announcement late last night and in the paper this morning. Just to prove that he is doing something, he has rushed out with a disallowable instrument.
I regret that rushed approach and propose my amendments in the hope that the response from the ACT’s parliament to problem gambling is more reasoned and more appropriate. We all acknowledge that problem gambling is undesirable and that it can have adverse outcomes. And I emphasise, therefore, that my amendments are an attempt to ensure that the response of our community to problem gambling is measured, responsible and balanced. I commend my amendments to the house. We will deal with them in due course.
In terms of policy development, as I have said, Mr Barr said at the release of the prevalence report that we should not be making hasty decisions. Yet that is what we are doing today. And if you want an overall conclusion from a policy perspective, given the findings in the ANU report, it appears that the negative messages targeting gambling are succeeding and it appears that the messages about dealing with problem gambling are also working. That is not to say there is not more to do. There will always be more to do, I suspect.
But we need to look at what is contained in this report. What we have is the failure of the Greens’ approach, through Ms Hunter’s bill, that demonstrates a failure in policy development. The basis of the Hunter bill is to target what she says is a harm caused by machine. She then goes on to say that poker machines cause real harm. Her bill is not entirely consistent with the findings in the ANU prevalence study.
Moreover, the prevalence study emphasises that, in drafting this bill, she has acted prematurely. Members need only look at page 28 of the study, where it says:
The considerable overlap between gambling activities means that it is not possible to separate the significance of any single activity from other activities without undertaking complex statistical analyses, and even these would be of questionable interpretation. The only group large enough to examine separately and in detail were people who gambled on lottery or scratch tickets, but who reported no other gambling activity.
This is what the report is saying. This is a complex matter and a new tax is not the simple answer. It will, I suspect, not be as effective as thought. We have the overlap of gaming activity. The quote on page 28 says that it is not possible to separate out the effects.
On page 27, we see that 79 per cent gamble on two or more activities. Indeed, only a small proportion of people gamble on gaming machines only, and that is referred to on page 26, where it says:
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