Page 2620 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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I believe that clubs and club directors want to do the right thing and whilst some of the requirements may appear onerous or cumbersome they are reasonably necessary given the nature of the activity and the community. As I said, the community quite rightly expects that we take all reasonable steps to ensure that there simply is not the opportunity to circumvent the intended operation of the act and that we have in place the required level of oversight.
I understand that there will be amendments proposed to the two sections that appear to have caused some concern for ClubsACT and we will discuss the detail of those clauses shortly. However, I would like to make a couple of general points in the broader context of the scheme. As I understand it, there is a concern about the operation of the proposals in terms of the interaction with the operation of the commonwealth Corporations Law. The Greens are confident that the concerns are not correct and that the passage of the bill will ultimately assist in regulating the operation of gaming machine licensees.
The relevant provisions of the Corporations Law can perhaps be best characterised as a default position or minimum requirements and reflect the manifest contemplation and intention that there will be circumstances where it is appropriate to adopt a different position. Equally, at a general level, there is no problem having an overlap between commonwealth and territory laws, and this includes using the same tests or standards for overlapping purposes. This often occurs in any federal system, particularly one such as ours which expressly provides for concurrent jurisdiction until the commonwealth expressly intends to be the sole regulator.
As I said, we do have an amendment to ensure that appropriate distinction between a mandatory reparation for harms being caused as opposed to a required community benefit that can be said would not otherwise be there if this activity was not undertaken. The simplest analogy that can be made is if problem gambling causes the community $100 in damage and those responsible for the addiction pay back $10.The reality is that the proportion is probably much smaller than that but, for the sake of the argument, let us say $10. Explain to me how that is of benefit to the community.
That is the issue: how is it of benefit to the community? What good comes about when the community is left with a $90 bill for the citizens, and their families, who are addicted to gambling and who do not choose to stop? When someone commits suicide because of their addiction, tell me how the gambling machine licensee made a contribution to the community when they were forced to give back a small proportion of that person’s money so that someone else could hopefully be prevented from the same fate. And we are talking about serious issues and harms here. The reality is that to make that argument you could only be concerned for the clubs. It is not about getting the best outcomes for the community; it is only about what the clubs think makes their actions look a little more palatable.
As I said, clubs do have enormous benefits for our community. They do provide a number of sponsorships to sporting clubs, they provide cheaper meals for families to be able to go and have a meal out on a Friday night or whatever. But we do need to understand that there are real issues with poker machines; there are real issues around
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