Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

This parliament presents an historic opportunity for poker machine reform, and it is vitally important that we seize this opportunity and that we put our support behind the government's package of reforms in the National Gambling Reform Bill 2012, the National Gambling Reform (Related Matters) Bill (No. 1) 2012 and National Gambling Reform (Related Matters) Bill (No. 2) 2012 before us now. Yes, the reforms on the table now are much less than what might have been—much less than the one-dollar maximum bets recommended by the Productivity Commission in 2010 and which I tried to secure immediately following the election, also in 2010. Yes, they are much less than the rollout of mandatory precommitment also recommended by the Productivity Commission in 2010 in which the Prime Minister agreed to personally but then walked away from in January this year. Despite all that, I believe these bills have merit and are worth supporting. They are worth supporting not because voluntary precommitment is much use, but rather because the bills make explicit in section 33 of the principal bill that the precommitment to be rolled out must be capable of disallowing unregistered play. In other words, it must be capable of mandatory precommitment at the flick of a switch—as the expression goes. This is very important, because all it would take in the future is for a federal, state or territory government of good heart to flick that switch and in doing so finally provide one of the most effective harm-minimisation measures available.

These bills are also worth supporting because they will finally establish the precedent of federal intervention in poker machine regulation. That is important because all of the states and territories, with the exception of Western Australia, have shown that they simply cannot be trusted when it comes to regulating their poker machine industries, or when it comes to implementing meaningful reforms to protect gamblers from the scourge of problem gambling. It seems the rivers of fool's gold in poker machine taxation revenue are just too attractive for the states and territories, even though quality research out of Tasmania this year has shown that the cost to the community of problem gambling is as much as twice the tax collected.

I understand that the numbers are tight for these bills, in part because many of the members and parties in this place are every bit as conflicted as their state and territory colleagues. For instance, the opposition opposes the bills for political reasons, even though voluntary precommitment is in fact their policy. Any number of members throughout this place do not like these bills, and many members will indeed vote against them, because those members are effectively on the payroll of the pokies industry on account of the fat donations they have received already or have been promised. In my opinion, that is corruption—not, of course, in the criminal sense, but it is every bit as dodgy as bags full of cash changing hands in some corrupt developing country.

Of course, politicians on the take are just a part of this story, because the real villains are the greedy poker machine barons who lie and bully to get their way, determined to do almost whatever it takes to fleece the unfortunate and to protect their profits. Make no mistake: we are not talking here about harmless recreation or quaint little businesses. No, we are often talking about big business, as illustrated by the fact the Productivity Commission found that in 2008-09 some $11.9 billion was lost on the pokies in this country.

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