Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Madam President, I will make a very short contribution, and I suspect that we will hear this many times this week and probably next week. This is a bill that we have not had a lot of time to look at. I have not received any approaches from any of the other areas - other codes - from either the greyhounds or the harness racing. The only time that I have been approached, in fact, or received anything on this was today at our briefing.

I would be surprised, perhaps, if the greyhounds, harness racing, even knew that this was probably coming in. I suspect -

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - Through you, Madam President - they have had input into it and part of it was stakeholders.

Mr DEAN - They have but, once again, it depends on who has the input and what part of the organisation. As we found out on previous legislation, they are not the greatest at communicating yet to the people who are actually involved in their organisations.

Mr Aird - You have to understand that the Director of Racing Services undertook a review, invited submissions, got 15 submissions, and the views of the vast majority of the submissions put forward are reflected in the legislation. I will talk about this in my summing up but do not misunderstand that a vast majority of the racing industry actually support the proposal.

Mr DEAN - Right. Once again I think we were told that it was mainly from the thoroughbred industry, wasn't it, as opposed to the others? That might be so. I certainly cannot argue against that because I am not sure.

The other comment I want to make at this stage is that it seems to me that we are taking this fairly casually. We are talking about jockeys, and it came out today, and we all know what the position is for the jockey. These people are professionals. It is their only means of security. It is their profession. They have families that rely on what they are doing and, therefore, I think it is incumbent on us to ensure that they are given a reasonable chance, a reasonable opportunity, to defend their position moving forward. I cannot be satisfied on this legislation, at this stage, that they are and will be. For instance, they put forward good reasons, and the thoroughbred industry in particular, as to why this current position should be retained.

I was trying to think a while ago of an analogy that I could use in this situation. I suppose the best one I could use would be with a footballer and, particularly, with a professional footballer - an AFL player - who is involved in an incident during the day then at the end of that game they are approached by the match manager or somebody else who has a talk to them about that incident. They later come before a tribunal - say, in two or three days' time, or whenever it might be - and they cannot, unless the chairman was to support them, call in any new evidence or any other evidence to support their case. I find that, here, to be a flaw in this legislation. I think that if the chairman feels fit, the chairman can allow that further evidence to be brought forward. But if the chairman does not feel it is fit - does not like it for whatever reason - the chairman can simply veto it there and then, and a jockey is left to simply defend his position on the evidence that was given previously.

Other members have referred to that here today, where these jockeys could be involved in eight or nine races in one day, not thinking about what has happened in the race that they have just ridden in but thinking of what is going to happen in the future - during the rest of that day. Therefore they might not put their best position forward in defence of their situation. So I have some concerns about that and I do not know whether any member is considering an amendment there but I think that is going to happen and I would need a fairly strong argument, in fact, to convince me that I should not support it, that being the case.

When I said that I think we were treating this fairly casually, the Treasurer made the comment in the briefing, 'Now let us try it and see how it goes'. Once again, I saw that as being not a very strong answer and not a strong argument to put forward as to why we should accept all of this new legislation. I find that a fairly weak position to put forward to us as to why we should support it. So that does not impress me either, and I will be giving that some thought as we move forward as well.

I think that is really all I wanted to say. The constitution of the board is reasonable and everybody seems to be accepting of that and I do not think there is any need to comment further on that. But certainly, the one point I want to make mention of is the evidence that can be brought in later for a hearing and I have some real concerns about that issue.