Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I move –
That so much of the Standing Orders be suspended as would prevent such motion from being dealt with forthwith –
That the House orders the Premier to table the report provided by MaxGaming regarding the implementation of mandatory pre-commitment cards for poker machines by 5.00 p.m. on Thursday 21 November.
This is clearly an urgent motion. Yesterday, the government announced a huge change in policy, one that has been the subject of much debate in this place in recent weeks, indeed since the state election. Their public statements in the Chamber and in media releases have pointed to a specific report as the rationale for their decision, but they have refused to release this report, both by request from media and to members of parliament.
It is urgent for the House to do what we are here to do today. We were all elected to make sure that this parliament and this government have standards of transparency and accountability and by any measure, not releasing the report that the government has used as a figleaf to justify abandoning their pre-commitment mandatory card is an appalling demonstration of a lack of regard for honesty and transparency.
This issue certainly cannot wait. It is live now and there are people in the community already – yesterday, today – talking vigorously and with great concern about the impacts it is going to have on Tasmanians lives. Let us not forget the people that we are talking about here, the thousands of Tasmanians who struggle every single day with gambling addiction. Their circumstances are real, they live with us today, they exist today, right now, so Tasmanians have a right to know the evidence the government has used as a justification for changing their policy. Those people are losing thousands and thousands of dollars to pokies every single day. A total $16 million a month leaves Tasmanians’ hands, the poorest Tasmanians’ hands, struggling in a cost-of-living crisis and it goes to pokies profits.
We believe the decision was about the government doing the bidding of the pokies lobby, and it was probably driven by threats from the industry in the recent election. We do not know about political donations. We have not heard the answer. The Premier refused to tell us. Whatever you think about that and whatever your party’s or individual policy is on poker machines, the government has, by its own words, justified this massive policy decision change using a report they have so far refused to make public.
I listened to the Premier’s answer to the question this morning and we do not accept that there is an argument for a report they have had and have used to base this policy decision change around. We do not accept that that information should not be made public. We do not agree that there are IP issues in a report like this that are a justification for not revealing it to the public.
Let us not forget that MaxGaming provided the report to government, and some enormous statements have been made by the Liberals about the justifications for their policy shift, including that it is going to have a significant cost increase that will delay implementation. We have heard from the previous treasurer and minister for Finance, Michael Ferguson, by his own words, ‘The pokies industry, the THA are doing it good. They are doing it so good’. All the evidence that came from the reports that he received is that hospitality venues are actually doing so much better after the 2022 announcement that the mandatory pre-commitment card would be coming in.
We are calling out the government for pretending that this is not an issue which we need to get to the bottom of, and the only way we can do that is to order the government to produce this report by 5.00 p.m. tomorrow. We believe a day is plenty of time. Tasmanians have a right to understand, organisations and advocates who have been fighting for years have that right, but most importantly, the Tasmanians who are being harmed every single day need to know what the reason was.
Time expired.
