Page 1993 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2017

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project like a substantial improvement to the Canberra Hospital campus through the delivery of a SPIRE centre, I would welcome their specialist engineering, planning and construction advice on how exactly they would go about doing that. The work needs to be done with stakeholders; it needs to go through all the processes that you would rightly expect us to do in terms of design, planning, procurement, integrating service delivery, discussion with stakeholders and discussion with the community. If the opposition does not wish us to go through a proper planning, procurement and design phase, that would be a surprise to all of us.

Clubs—assistance package

MR PARTON: My question is to the Minister for Regulatory Services. Minister, can you please detail which clubs will be beneficiaries of the clubs assistance package announced by the Treasurer in yesterday’s budget?

MR RAMSAY: The clubs that will be beneficiaries of that will be the small to medium clubs.

MR PARTON: Minister, how will you guarantee that this funding assistance will be spent on genuine diversification measures and not just on padding the coffers of Labor-friendly clubs?

MR RAMSAY: Thank you—

Mr Hanson: It is an outrage—dodgy.

MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, that interjection was unparliamentary and you will withdraw it.

Mr Hanson: The word ‘dodgy’, Madam Speaker, is unparliamentary? Is that a ruling?

MADAM SPEAKER: In that context I believe it is. You will withdraw it.

Mr Hanson: While I am happy to withdraw it—

MADAM SPEAKER: You will just withdraw it without comment, Mr Hanson.

MR RAMSAY: Thank you, Madam Speaker. The government is firmly committed to helping clubs to diversify their income. It is part of our ongoing work to help remove the issues of problem gambling and to help clubs move away from their heavy reliance on electronic gaming machines. That is all part of the work that we have done in relation to the reduction of the number of gaming machines from 5,000 to 4,000 over this time.

In relation to the particular package, yes, there will certainly be a significant tax rebate for those small to medium clubs. We have already been working with clubs across the breadth of the sector, and I have met with a number of those individual


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