26 June 2009

Tradies Uber Alles - swallowing the Labor Club

| johnboy
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Comrades rejoice!

The Canberra Times reports that the Labor Club venues are not falling far from the tree. They’ve been bought up for $20 million by the Canberra Tradesmen’s Union Club.

While the mighty CFMEU does occasionally strike out on its own, it’s still part of the family.

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True, the RUC’s not cheap. And the $8 fancy beers are a bit OTT.

Maybe now they are down to a solo customer in the place they managed to produce an edible meal.

ant said :

On current performance, the RUC would be well-qualified to run ALL the clubs.

…except at the RUC you pay restaurant prices for bistro food, like schnitzels.

Fluges said :

I had dinner at the Dickson Tradies last week and the food was excellent. And the service was excellent too.

I want corroboration of this, I just do not believe it.

Fluges said :

I had dinner at the Dickson Tradies last week and the food was excellent. And the service was excellent too.

Please go directly to jail.

Do not pass go.

Do not collect $100.

I had dinner at the Dickson Tradies last week and the food was excellent. And the service was excellent too.

I don’t care about poker machines, but I care deeply about schnitzels and this is a very, very bad move for the schnitzels.

There should be a schnitzel clause inserted into the rules about clubs acquiring each other, whereby any entity that cannot show that it intends to pay due regard to quality schnitzels and has the capacity to do so, should not be allowed to run a club.

On current performance, the RUC would be well-qualified to run ALL the clubs.

The 24% reduction is a concession in the legislation (signing finanical concessions to your single largest contributing sector into law, who’d have guessed…) as “recognition of the expenses a licensee incurs in gaming machine operations in order that the required level of community contributions can be made.”

Also, as of the 2004 Gaming Machine Act there is no specific statutory requirement for political party disclosures to be forwarded to the Minister, the Commission requires that information on its own authority for maintaining an accurate historical public record, and includes it in the Community Contributions Notices which are submitted to the Legislative Assembly on those grounds.

uniqueusername said :

Labor, not ‘labour’.

The difference is yoU!

LOL. reminds me of the other great quote “there’s no ‘I’ in Team” to which the answer is “no, but there’s a ‘me’ if you look hard enough”.

OT – Why am I not surprised that the Tradies is now the proud owner of these clubs?! Surely the Sth Cross, Vikings or even the Hellenic Clubs would have been interested and in a better position to finance new acquisitions than the Tradies? Then again, are Clubs still the cash cow they were once seen as in the ‘pre-smoking restriction’ days?

For what counts and how, check page 5 of that same document.

Contributions fall into broad categories of
(i) Charitable and Social Welfare;
(ii) Sport and Recreation;
(iii) Non-Profit Activities; and
(iv) Community Infrastructure.

With beneficial adjustments, at a rate of $4 claimable for every $3 spent, for making contributions into Problem Gambling and Women’s Sport categories.

(For the record, while seperate to their community contributions, Labor Clubs and Tradies make up 99.1% of political contributions, with all of it going to ACT Labor. Do you really think thats about to change with this sale?)

… 7%? Pez. And what’s with that arbitrary 24% of GGMR lowering the NGMR?

p1 said :

I thought that all poker machine revenue in the ACT had to go to benefit the community. Surely donating many to politics is the opposite of this?

Section 166 of the Act requires a licensee to give the Commission within one month of the end of the financial year a copy of the records kept under section 165 of the Act. In addition, information specifying the licensee’s GGMR, NGMR, total value of contributions and total value of contributions to registered parties and their associated political entities must be provided.

(Translation: You can contribute as much as you like to political groups (you are required to tell the Gaming and Racing Commission this, in addition to the Electoral Commission), but this is seperate to your disclosure of Community Contributions, which must be to explicitly non-political groups.)

The contribution requirement for a club is quite different to that for a hotel/tavern. For a licensee that is a club, the required community contribution for a financial year is a specified minimum percentage (7%) of the club’s NGMR for the financial year. However, for a licensee that is a hotel or tavern there is no required minimum contribution although the licensee is required to report on any contributions made and to express the value of them as a percentage of their GGMR.
(NGMR = Net Gaming Machine Revenue)

NGMR, as defined in the legislation, is calculated as follows:
Gross Gaming Machine Revenue (GGMR) derived by the licensee, less:
a) any amount of gaming machine tax payable on the GGMR; and
b) 24% of GGMR.

(This is from http://www.gamblingandracing.act.gov.au/Documents/Community%20Contributions%20Report%202007-08.pdf)

And can you seriously imagine our pollies writing laws under which they wouldn’t count as a contribution to the community?

I might be an optimist, but I’m not delusional.

p1 said :

I thought that all poker machine revenue in the ACT had to go to benefit the community. Surely donating many to politics is the opposite of this?

Heck the laws are so lax they can buy themselves plasma tv screens and say it’s a contribution to the community.

And can you seriously imagine our pollies writing laws under which they wouldn’t count as a contribution to the community?

I thought that all poker machine revenue in the ACT had to go to benefit the community. Surely donating many to politics is the opposite of this?

The Labor Party will reap $20 million for their war chest by seeling their clubs to the unions.

The Tradies will, continue through their clubs and poker machine revenue, laundry millions of dollars back into the Labor Party.

The Stanhope Government will still legislate to protect the Tradies Club and its poker machine revenue – so what has changed?

The Labor Party said they will sell their clubs so that there would not be a conflict of interest!

It all sounds like Über political money hiding to me.

dvaey said :

And ant, what terrible restaurant? After 83 closed, nothings opened up since has it? (honestly, I have had no reason to return since they closed it)

As far as I am aware, the owners of Restaurant 83 are taking the CFMEU to court over being unlawfully kicked out after they (Restaurant 83) complained to the Woden Tradies Manager over the bar that is on the same level & even produced evidence. It all had to do with glasses not being collected. The thing is that the Woden Tradies owns the bar, so they kicked them out.

So nothing else can replace the space previously occupied by Restaurant 83 until the court case is complete. But you also have to remember that the CFMEU plans of knocking down the current Woden Tradies & building a flash new complex. So why get a new tenant only to have them shut up shops for a few months.

Trouble is, it’s very hard to get an umlaut on an english keyboard, and the extra ‘e’ just looks plain funny – especially to those of us who never kept up with the spelling reforms.

If you’re going to take shots on spelling, the ‘Uber’ in the title either needs an umlaut (Ü) or a transliteration to Ueber if its not supported in the RiotACT characterset.
Both the (former) German anthem and the Dead Kennedys’ single did that.
😛

uniqueusername11:30 am 26 Jun 09

Labor, not ‘labour’.

The difference is yoU!

Kimg O’Malley was wrong about alcohol, too.

$20mil seems like a pretty cheap deal to me. Surely that’s not market value?

frontrow said :

So the Labour Party has converted it’s pokie income into cold, hard cash.

Let’s see – $20 million is about 40 years worth of donations from the Labor Clubs’ pokie profits. But now it’s more hidden.

I wouldn’t want to be contesting the next election against that kind of money.

ant said :

I think the Dickson Tradies currently holds the honour of serving The Worst Meal in Canberra… on numerous occasions, by all reports.

Those people have clearly never gagged on a meal from the Woden Tradies bistro (not 83).

So the Labour Party has converted it’s pokie income into cold, hard cash. Any takers that Nick Xenophon gets some quid pro quo in the not too distant future?

Very limited number of organisations able to take on the poker machine licences though.

So for $20mil outlay, they get a $23mil\year boost to gross revenue stream from the pokies alone, four premises, all asssociated equipment, and a strong brand (assuming they want to keep them as licensed Clubs)?

Unlike CSCC, Tradies’ don’t put their financial statements online, so I’m having to work off ACT Gamine & Racing 07-08 reports.

Ditto for Dickson Tradies – the place is a ghost town now.

They must have some kind of plan for acquiring more properties, but I don’t know what it is (building units?)

Steady Eddie10:02 am 26 Jun 09

jimbocool said :

Ant refers to the horror that is the ‘restaurant’ in the Dickson Tradies. Once upon a time there was a fabulous (if exceptionally daggy) bistro there that served anything you liked, so long as it was a schnitzel. Now it is unspeakable.
Mrs Cool is very fond of the City Labor club bistro schnitty – it will be interesting to see if it goes the same way as the Tradies.

Don’t forget the fantastic 83 Restaurant at Woden Tradies which was inexplicably closed down two months ago. I don’t know how they’ll sustain four new clubs because I drove past Woden Tradies Sat nite after dinner at the Hellenic Club and there were only about six cars in the carpark. When 83 Restaurant was operating that carpark was always full. Tradies will have to get 83 Restaurant back otherwise they will go down the tubes.

I think the Dickson Tradies currently holds the honour of serving The Worst Meal in Canberra… on numerous occasions, by all reports.

The ‘revamped’ Dickson Tradies bistro is positively Lovecraftian: the unspeakable eldritch terror inspired by the ‘meals’ they produce can only be seen as an attempt to kill their unwitting patrons and offer their immortal souls to Yuggoth (“he of the shining lights of the poker machines”).

Ant refers to the horror that is the ‘restaurant’ in the Dickson Tradies. Once upon a time there was a fabulous (if exceptionally daggy) bistro there that served anything you liked, so long as it was a schnitzel. Now it is unspeakable.
Mrs Cool is very fond of the City Labor club bistro schnitty – it will be interesting to see if it goes the same way as the Tradies.

They probably wanna get in quick, so they can turn the Belco Labor club into a 20-storey motel in the belco redevelopments, just like theyre doing in woden.

And ant, what terrible restaurant? After 83 closed, nothings opened up since has it? (honestly, I have had no reason to return since they closed it)

Oh great, more terrible restaurants!

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