Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, it gives me absolutely no pleasure to rise tonight to talk this motion because I think the one thing we probably all agree on here in this House is this is an issue of significant gravity. A no-confidence motion is not to be taken lightly. Irrespective of many of the comments I have heard, certainly from the government side, today, the Greens considered this very deeply and felt we had absolutely no choice but to move this motion.
The Premier has long said he is leading a government with heart. The pokies pre‑commitment card, in many ways, was central to that. It was the one demonstration that the Premier and this government, with the assistance of the member for Bass, Mr Ferguson, would make hard decisions that their traditional stakeholders would not like. The reason we are debating this motion is because we were let down. We and every other Tasmanian who cares about their fellow Tasmanians were let down.
Much has been made in this House this afternoon about stability, about making parliament work. We are absolutely committed to that. However, making this parliament work is a two-way street. If we are going to take assurances from government and government ministers at face value, we have to have some confidence that they are true. What has been revealed today is that, through exercising our responsibility to hold government to account, we have unpacked the fact that the government, through the Premier, has been utterly untruthful when it comes to the pokies pre-commitment card.
It is a nation-leading reform. Do not take my word for it; take it from ex-minister Ferguson in his release announcing it in November 2022, in which he said:
The Tasmanian government is leading the nation in the area of gambling harm minimisation and it is strengthening measures to further reduce problem gambling.
We were going to lead the nation. Now, we are just going to watch the rest of them and try and work with them to get it up. That is an utter betrayal of Tasmanians and their desire for this.
This concept did not come out of the blue. As the member for Bass said, he did not invent it. It is a recommendation from the Liquor and Gaming Commission. They wanted a pre‑commitment system in their report to the Treasurer on it. They wanted a pre-commitment card and the government made it clear:
The government will mandate pre-commitment features as an essential part of the gaming framework. The government agrees that pre-commitment will have the most impact on minimising gambling harm.
The most impact. When we heard the Premier today talk about harm minimisation and facial recognition, and all these other initiatives, they are second best and the government itself has acknowledged that a pre-commitment card is the best and most impactful way of minimising gambling harm. Pokies do cause harm, much harm, and pokies are designed to addict. They are hardwired to ensure they suck more out than they spit out. They make a point of ensuring that their users lose, and lose they do. Since the infamous 2018 election, where gambling money had such a profound and insidious influence on our democracy, government data demonstrates that Tasmanians had lost over $1.1 billion. In the 2022-23 financial year, a single year, $189.6 million was lost to Tasmanian poker machines. That is over half‑a-million dollars a day being sucked out of the most impoverished and vulnerable communities into the coffers of some of the wealthiest. Advocates estimate that 40 per cent of losses on poker machines are borne by someone already experiencing gambling harm, and the harm from gambling extends well beyond the direct impacts on the gambler. Families get caught up in the crisis. Pokies ruin lives, they increase poverty in already vulnerable communities, they contribute to mental and other health conditions, drive domestic violence and crime and, in the worst‑case scenario, contribute to suicide. They are the facts. This is what these parasites do to our people.
Pokies cost more than just the cold hard dollars lost. The public expense of the impacts of pokies extends well beyond the health expenses, the police cost and the lost productivity. They are parasites tapping and sapping the public good. My electorate of Clark has the highest density of poker machines in the state with Glenorchy hosting the Golden Mile and the corresponding costs of losses and impacts. That is why the Liberals’ pledge to a mandatory pre‑commitment gaming card was such a welcome commitment in 2022.
Pokies have corrupted our politics since before they even arrived on our shores in the 1960s and 1970s. When the casinos arrived, the licence was granted on the promise that no pokies would come. The Liberals formed a minority government in 1969 with a crossbencher, Mr Kevin Lyons, who was made deputy premier. In 1971 the Liberals moved toward a Launceston casino licence for a direct competitor of Federal, and it did not end well. Kevin Lyons, the crossbench deputy premier, shocked the state in 1972 by resigning from the government without warning. A former Labor staffer alleges in a sworn statement that Lyons’ resignation was the result of corruption.
In the 1980s, Federal achieved bipartisan backing for their operations. The Liberal legislation to allow pokies wins the support of Labor and passes in 1985. As was mentioned before, Bob Brown was the only lower House member to vote against it. In 1990, pokies spread. The Liberal government moved to allow pokies in pubs and clubs in 1993. Federal Hotels were a major roadblock, campaigning strongly against the plan until they bully the government into giving them a monopoly licence to operate all pokies until 2008. Despite the huge guaranteed profits, they got the licence for free and the tax rate for their profits is set way lower than recommended.
In the 2000s, local federal supporters Jim Bacon and treasurer Paul Lennon delivered the company another huge win. They did a secret deal to extend Federal’s pokies monopoly until 2023, and they increased the number of pokies allowed in the state. In the 2010s we have the infamous 2018 election, where the campaign led by ‘Love your Local’ effectively bought the election. In the 2020s we have had just a small piece of shining light, with the commitment of this government to introduce a mandatory pre‑commitment card.
That brings us to the Ferguson announcement of the election this year, when the government re-committed its commitment to the pre‑commitment card. On 16 February, then minister Ferguson said:
Importantly, we also remain committed to harm minimisation and will implement a mandatory card-based gaming system for electronic gaming machines as soon as reasonably practical.
They are his words. They were the words in the election context. The Premier reiterated them during the election, and I read this again into the Hansard. The reporter said:
So, you’re committed to the $5000 per year, $100 per day limit on these cards?
Premier Jeremy Rockliff said: We are committed to that reform. I have said that very clearly.
The reporter said – So, to be absolutely clear, you’re committed to the limits?
The Premier said – We are committed. I have said that. We are committed.
The reporter says, To the limits?
The Premier says, We are committed.
The reporter says, To the limits?
The Premier says, To the limits, we are committed.
That is the history of pokies in this state. They have had an insidious impact on our politics, on our body politics, and there have been allegations along the way of direct corruption. When the Ferguson announcement of a mandatory pre‑commitment gaming system was made, it came with a $268,000 sweetener for the Tasmanian Hospitality Association. Even when announcing that policy, it had to come with a sweetener for the lobby group.
In June this year we were told there were going to be delays, and I think that everybody accepted at face value those delays. This is a complex situation. We are talking about new programming. It is a complex card and system to roll out. But it did beg the question as to who was contracted to do this – MaxGaming, the very company that is in partnership with the Hoteliers’ Association and also delivering the gaming machines in the first place. Issues of conflict of interest were raised and batted off by the government. They were batted off by the then minister in Estimates this year basically saying, ‘Well, it is a contract; they are obliged to deliver on their contract, nothing to see here. There is no conflict here’. We do not accept that, but a delay is a delay. A delay is not a deferral and there is a very big difference.
Much has been made of an exchange between me and minister Street, then Finance minister, during Estimates, and whether the Cabinet and minister Street actually knew that this backflip was even happening. I believe this goes to the heart of the motion. The deception is that the Tasmanian people have been deceived, the Parliament has been deceived and it seems that the Premier’s own colleagues have been deceived in this case.
I asked minister Street:
There is a lot of fear that with Mr Ferguson no longer responsible for this card, the government’s commitment to it and its ability to deliver it will be lost with him. Minister, I am looking for an ironclad guarantee from you that it is still this government’s policy and you are still pulling out all stops to overcome the challenges and get this card in place as soon as possible in the interests of vulnerable Tasmanians.
This is where Minister Street said to me across the table,
‘I can sit here and look you in the eye and tell you that the government’s commitment to the pre-commitment card has not changed’.
I accept that. I accept that at face value. I accepted it at the time and I continue to accept it now. We do not have any doubt about that commitment from Mr Street. But it took questions from the Greens to actually tyre lever the truth out of this government about exactly what it was doing.
On 17 October, Dr Woodruff, the Leader of the Greens, was asking the Premier very straight,
Are you ditching default loss limits? Are you allowing more than one card per person or is it that you are no longer going to make this system universal across all venues?
At that point, the Premier said,
We are working towards the implementation of a mandatory card-based system for electronic gaming machines.
The questioning went on quite significantly on that day because we were not satisfied with that answer, and it was not until that evening that the Leader of the House, Mr Abetz, came to the podium and conceded that the government was doing some work to look at this issue. Minister Abetz said:
The Premier was asked about the government’s commitment to harm minimisation and the implementation of electronic gaming machine reform during question time. The Premier repeats that our government remains committed to harm minimisation. We acknowledge that there are concerns about economic impact and the effect on jobs, which we must consider in the implementation. The Premier advises that the government has requested advice from the Department of State Growth on the current government policy impact on the hospitality venues across the state, including the tourism and hospitality election commitment, the government’s electronic gaming machine existing policy, and the government’s 2030 Visitor Economy Strategy commitments – regional events.
The Department of State Growth has engaged Deloitte Access Economics to undertake an analysis of the social and economic impact of the above. A report will be publicly released by government.
It has not been publicly released. We have not even got to see the terms of reference of that of that review by Deloitte Economics, but we now have this policy backflip. We now have the pre-commitment card put on the absolute backburner and deferred into oblivion.
It is simply not good enough. We still need, and there is still an obligation of the government to actually come clean on whether they have done that piece of Deloitte work. Is this decision to defer based on anything that Deloitte gave you? We do not know. No one has said it in this place. We have not even seen the terms of reference, and we just do not know. The reality is card-based play is the most effective. That is what the Liquor and Gaming Commission said. That is what the government accepted.
With all this talk of facial recognition technology, you just need to look at the results of a study recently released in the Journal of Gambling Studies. It has looked at the South Australian model. We heard a lot about South Australia today and the impact of facial recognition technology. A paper that was published in the Journal of Gambling Studies this year says:
This paper reports on the government-led implementation of facial recognition technology as part of an automated self-exclusion program in the city of Adelaide in South Australia, one of the first jurisdiction-wide enforcements of this controversial technology in small venue gambling.
The South Australian case illustrates how this technology does not appear to better address the core issues underpinning problem gambling and/or substantially improve conditions for problem gamblers to refrain from gambling.
There we have it. We actually have some evidence and some research by some experts in South Australia that are showing that the things that the government is pointing to in terms of harm minimisation as a substitute for this card‑based play do not work. They are not as effective. That is not new; we knew it all the way along and the government accepted it. I read again from their response to the Gaming Commission’s report:
The government agrees that pre-commitment will have the most impact on minimising gambling harm and accepts the system functionality, including the concurrent default loss limits proposed by the commission.
That is why the commission proposed it, and that is why the government accepted it. It is pre‑commitment cards that will work and do the job.
Speaking of jobs, we heard a lot about jobs, and jobs are going to be the excuse for ditching this pre-commitment card, but some other research from way back in 2005, which I will read from directly, has demonstrated that:
The results indicate that $1 million of gambling income, including income from sources other than electronic gaming machines, is associated with 3.2 jobs, which is significantly lower than the number of staff associated with the sale of liquor and other beverages – 8.3 persons employed per $1 million dollars of income, and takings from food, meals and sales – 20.2 persons per $1 million dollars. Such a low level of employment intensity would largely explain why the fall in gambling expenditure has not translated into a significant fall in employment from gaming venues.
When they introduced smoking bans indoors in gaming venues, there was a reduction in income, but it did not translate into a significant reduction in jobs.
The reality here is that this government, secretly until this morning, has been backpedalling on the one effective harm minimisation action that can be taken, that can protect vulnerable Tasmanians, that can protect their families, and that can protect people from the parasites that are pokies. In exchange, they are talking about ineffective facial recognition technology, and are going to point to jobs and economic loss as a result of the card. It simply does not stack up.
In the minute or two I have remaining, I want to speak to the Premier’s contribution. The Premier talked about policy difference, and we are always happy to debate policy issues, but we need to do it openly, accurately and honestly, and that is the substance of this motion. The debate we have been having on this issue has not been honest. The government has not been honest about its intention.
This is not about a policy difference between the government and the Greens; this is a policy difference between what the government said they would deliver and what they unwound secretly until they were called out, until we actually tyre-levered the truth out of them and got them to acknowledge that they have absolutely capitulated to the gambling lobby. Despite the fact that the government complies with the law on its donations, we do not know how much they received before the last election. We simply do not know that yet.
There is no way of determining how much the gambling lobby donated to the Liberal Party and how much of an impact that has had in regard to buying this policy backflip. The Premier has been consistently untruthful about it. Scrutiny is intense – absolutely. People are hurting and it will cost families. To finish, I want to read into Hansard a statement from TasCOSS, which says it is:
… deeply disappointed that the Tasmanian Government has today turned its back on implementing a nation-leading mandatory pre-commitment gaming card.
The Premier’s mantra of ‘promises made, promises kept’ has rung hollow with this policy backdown. That is absolutely the case. This is a backflip of monumental proportions and it is to absolutely no credit that the Premier has been deceitful, destructive and disingenuous when it comes to his contributions and his discussion about this issue over recent time.
Time expired.
