Page 1637 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2016
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Our clubs sector is under threat, and it is under threat on a number of fronts. Firstly, there is hostility from the Chief Minister towards clubs. I do not quite get it. I am not sure whether it is a cultural thing or whatever it might be—whether he prefers inner-city dining or he does not like pokies. Whatever it is, it is quite clear that under Andrew Barr there is a hostility towards clubs. Quite clearly, there is hostility from the Greens—and that has been long felt by the clubs—towards the clubs sector. It is ironic because both organisations are funded in their election campaigns by the CFMEU through the Tradies. So they are prepared to take the Tradies’ money but they do not like clubs. That may have some bearing on certain deals that are afoot with the casino. I am not sure; there are wheels within wheels on this one.
The clubs are under threat with the casino; there is no doubt about it. Mr Smyth has made it clear that there is concern that is quite legitimate from the clubs that the community gaming model is under threat. If the casino gets poker machines, as is their desire, in the number that they want then it will put a number of clubs, I think, under threat. The case has been well made that, for a lot of clubs, if they do not go under, their ability to support the organisations that they currently support in our community will be severely and savagely compromised.
We have a decision to make. Is that the outcome that we want, so that a foreign-owned casino that have never had pokies are gifted them by this government and they can then squeeze out the clubs? That is the reality of what will happen.
We have a particular concern with this deal because of some of the statements that have been made to me about where the pokies will come from and where the money will be going. It has been put to me quite clearly that the Tradies club, the CFMEU-owned Tradies club, will be making a deal whereby, if the casino gets the approval, they will be providing hundreds of poker machines to the casino at a value in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars and will be walking away with tens of millions of dollars.
That gives me real cause for concern on a whole number of levels, particularly given the very close linkages between the Labor Party and the CFMEU, the intermingling of the membership, the funding by the CFMEU to the Labor Party to conduct its political activities and the funding by the CFMEU to the Greens to conduct their political dealings. I do not see how any deal like that could be made without not just a perceived but a real conflict of interest. There are a lot of things at stake, not least the ethical conduct of this government.
The opposition has tried to navigate this whole package. Mr Barr said that if we could get a bipartisan or tripartisan way forward then he would go with that. In good faith, we believed that—naively, probably, as did the clubs—and Mr Smyth led a select committee that provided a way forward. There were a number of recommendations, 11 from memory, which provided a way forward, supported by clubs. It was a good piece of work. It is not easy to navigate that sort of result in a tripartisan environment.
The result was that those recommendations were largely dismissed by the government. It became apparent to all of us that Mr Barr never had any intention whatsoever of
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