Page 2884 - Week 08 - Thursday, 17 August 2017
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The government’s view is that we do need to do more in this space and keep looking at the evidence. In the first week of August I introduced the Gaming Machine (Cash Facilities) Amendment Bill. The bill will require that cash withdrawals from EFTPOS facilities in a club must not exceed $200. It will also require the person operating the EFTPOS facility to be trained in the responsible provision of gambling services. This bill was a direct response to concerns raised in the community about the availability of cash at gaming venues, and a subsequent audit by the Gambling and Racing Commission.
We recognise the important role that community clubs play in the life of our city and we understand that the club industry is operating in a changing business environment. That is why I also introduced legislation to give small and medium clubs and club groups a 50 per cent gaming tax rebate to support changing business models. The rebate comes with the opportunity to apply for a one-off $10,000 grant. These measures will support clubs to invest in businesses other than gaming machines. The legislation also includes a change to make social impact assessments more widely available online. This change will give people an opportunity to comment on proposed changes to the number of machines in a club before they are approved.
The industry itself has identified that changes in consumer tastes, increased competition in the food, beverages and entertainment market, demographic change and, in particular, the growth in alternative gambling products, including online gambling, mean that the clubs business model has to change. The support package foreshadows a key government commitment, and that is to reduce the number of gaming machine authorisations in the territory to 4,000 by 1 July 2020. Our policy is to help clubs focus on offering community services and to reduce their reliance on gaming machines. We have already undertaken some preliminary consultation with the club sector on the best way to achieve the 4,000 limit on gaming machine authorisations.
Today, informed by that preliminary consultation, I propose to table the policy paper “Implementing the government commitment to reduce gaming machine authorisations”. The paper sets out a number of options to achieve 4,000 by July 2020. The options are varied, and the information we get from this paper will help us to implement this policy successfully. In terms of the timing and staging of these approaches, the paper notes that, since the commencement of the current trading scheme on 31 August 2015, under which one authorisation must be forfeited to the territory for every four traded, 37 out of a starting total of 5,022 authorisations have been forfeited. This means that the ACT currently has 4,985 gaming machine authorisations, and this number will have to be reduced by 985 to reach the 4,000 maximum by July 2020.
The paper canvasses increased forfeiture rates, compulsory surrenders, whether in stages or otherwise, and how a club’s gaming machine revenue should impact on participation in the new forfeitures. The models for surrender of authorisations include one based on the number of authorisations held by a licensee, with larger clubs required to contribute to the compulsory surrender at a higher rate than smaller clubs. An alternative model, for example, is to require clubs that make larger amounts
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