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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-09-25 Daily Xml
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Bills

Statutes Amendment (Gambling - Mandatory Pre-Commitment System) Bill

Second Reading

The Hon. C. BONAROS (12:48): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

In the previous fortnight I introduced the Statutes Amendment (Gambling—Mandatory Pre-Commitment System) Bill 2024. It Is one of three bills that I introduced on the same day and I intend to speak to today. This particular bill focuses on mandatory pre-commitment when it comes to poker machines.

Australia has earned the unfortunate title of the world's biggest gamblers. This is not a crown we should wear proudly. Despite making up just 0.5 per cent of the world's population, we account for 18 per cent of the world's poker machines. Even more shocking, 76 per cent of total numbers of poker machines that are not located in casinos are found right here in Australia.

This is no accident. Our gambling losses as a nation have tipped the $24 billion mark each year, with just over half of those losses coming from poker machines. That is according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. There are other reports that indicate that those figures—and these have been quoted only last month—are now as high as $32 billion.

Australians are the world's biggest losers when it comes to gambling and, in short, it is our laws that are to blame. It is also no accident that Western Australia has the lowest per capita gambling losses in this country. The obvious conclusion that you can reach in relation to that jurisdiction is that is because poker machines are confined to their casinos.

This bill introduces a mandatory precommitment system, a restriction that caps the amount of money a person can spend on poker machines within a set period. It is actually completely in line with the code that currently exists around precommitment, but in a voluntary form. It ensures players are able to set their limits before they start gambling, helping prevent runaway losses.

A robust precommitment system will indeed prevent and reduce harm. There is no question about that. We know that gamblers often underestimate how much they are spending. They get caught up in the lights, in the sounds, in the atmosphere of a poker machine room and, of course, in the false hope of winning back their losses.

We know the tragic stories of people sitting at machines for hours and hours on end, not wanting to move because they think that with the next $10, $20 or $50 they put in that machine they will win back everything that they have lost during that sitting. They are the issues that this bill seeks to target. The machines, we know, are rigged for people to lose, and the addiction feeds on false promises.

The bill itself is in line with proposals from New South Wales and Tasmania. Indeed, Tasmania is leading the way, with its precommitment system set to take effect in December 2025. Their system, which actually goes further than the one that I have proposed here today, requires players to register. It eliminates cash transactions for poker machines and introduces single-use cards that track playtime losses and even enforce mandatory breaks every two hours. The system will include three limits: maximum loss amounts, time played and enforced breaks. Once those limits are reached, the machine will disable itself and notify the venue.

Tasmania's default limits—and this is where that is at the most stringent end of precommitment—are set at $100 per day, $500 per month or $5,000 per year. Players can choose to increase their limits, but only after a 24-hour cooling-off period. The Tasmanian system, of course, is still in development, but it is clear they are taking meaningful steps to combat the harm caused by gambling addiction.

It is worth noting also, before I get to New South Wales, that Victoria has implemented a partial precommitment system at Crown Casino, following the recommendations of the 2021 royal commission. They have capped losses and linked the system to their loyalty program for Crown's 2,629 poker machines. By the end of the year, Victorian players will also have to comply with new regulations that further protect against gambling-related harm, including mandatory closing hours.

For the record, when you do visit that casino in Victoria the only way you can gamble is by presenting to the concierge or the reception desk, effectively signing up to become a Crown member, which involves handing over identification—a driver's licence—answering some questions as to your identity and setting those limits.

You might be encouraged to set them differently if you are not aware of how those limits apply, but effectively you are told you can choose a limit to set and you can choose whether to set it weekly, daily or monthly. You will be told that if you set a monthly limit of $5,000 and you lose that in today's sitting then you will not be able to gamble at the casino again for the remainder of the month. This is what it takes to gamble on poker machines in Victoria today. There is no other way of accessing those products in that jurisdiction. I also remind members that in the New South Wales jurisdiction, which this bill is based on, this was an election commitment, one that was taken to an election and has been the subject now of implementation via a trial.

Nobody is saying that these schemes are easy to implement, and I know and I expect that when I hear from other members they will say, 'New South Wales hasn't worked. Tasmania has been delayed.' But what we do know is that when you talk about voluntary precommitment versus mandatory precommitment, then, yes, there are costs involved and, yes, it is more difficult to implement. We also do not have anywhere near the number of machines as New South Wales. They have something like 89,000 machines in that jurisdiction, so we do not have anything near the number of machines that they have.

It is easy to suggest that this would be too expensive to implement, but I remind the government, when they speak to this bill, that this is also a revenue stream that is bringing in close to $1 billion now each and every year in revenue, and that is increasing. Despite previous suggestions that those figures would be going down, we are now just shy of the billion-dollar mark. Internationally, countries like Norway and Sweden have adopted precommitment systems and the results speak for themselves: losses have been dramatically reduced.

In terms of the bill that I am introducing, we propose a $20,000 cap per year, and that can be subject to debate in this place, with the flexibility to set a lower limit through regulations. This acknowledges the government's reliance on poker machine revenue but also provides a starting point for meaningful reform.

This is not my first rodeo, and I am fully aware of the reluctance of governments past, present and future to give up their addiction to gambling revenue, but we have to ask ourselves: what is the real cost of this dirty money that the government is so reliant upon? How many lives need to be destroyed before the government and the opposition, and successive governments and oppositions in this state, stop kowtowing to the poker machine lobby? We have to ask where our moral compass lies when it comes to the real cost of poker machines in this jurisdiction.

The bill also mandates two-minute breaks for every hour of play and requires every player to be registered before using a machine. Players must provide appropriate identification and nominate a bank account for deposits and withdrawals. Finally, it mandates that machines display responsible gambling messages and disable themselves once the player reaches their preset expenditure limits.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform has pointed out that 63¢ of every dollar put into a poker machine comes from the pockets of someone addicted to gambling. They are not alone. This is not entertainment, it is addiction plain and simple. They estimate that gambling contributes to about 20 per cent of suicides in Australia. That statistic alone should horrify all of us. In 2022, 75 per cent of Australians gambled, and recent analysis shows that South Australians spent an average of over $1,550 per person, including children, per year on gambling. Statistics clearly show that these figures are, in fact, on the increase.

I invite the government and, indeed, the opposition to take a long, hard look at the cost of this up-front sugar hit that they have become addicted to in terms of poker machine gambling revenue—a billion dollars a year—because if we are serious about tackling issues like family violence, domestic violence, suicide, poverty and cost-of-living crisis, then surely we have to acknowledge the social harms caused by gambling. I seek leave to insert the rest of my speech into Hansardwithout my reading it.

Leave granted.

This bill is also in line with the most recent findings and recommendations of the Grattan Institute's report, A Better Bet: How Australia Should Prevent Gambling Harm, which cites our nation's lax approach to regulating gambling and, effectively, 'letting the gambling industry run wild'.

Make no mistake, poker machines are the crystal meth of gambling and we have allowed these machines to wreak havoc on our communities, targeting our most vulnerable community members. In the first year of poker machines, South Australians lost $185.4 million. Those cumulative losses have now reached $19.7 billion, of which the government has gained $7.8 billion in taxes, and venues have reaped $11.9 billion.

They have changed the social fabric of our state for the worse and, as my predecessor has stated, left deep economic and social scars. In the absence of meaningful reforms, and, in the absence of a commitment to a mandatory pre-commitment scheme, the problems will worsen, those scars will get deeper, and we will be to blame.

It is not good enough to tell me while behind closed doors that you hate poker machines and would like to see the back of them, as many of my colleagues do. It is not good enough to continue our lax approach to the regulatory regime governing electronic gaming machines in this state. We need some affirmative action that will actually stop the harm caused by poker machines in its tracks: that is what this bill would achieve.

I will end by reminding honourable members that this bill does not seek to reinvent or undo the voluntary pre-commitment scheme that exists in our codes today. Instead, it makes it mandatory in nature. In the absence of such a mandate, that existing scheme will not be worth the paper it is written on.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:15

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