Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I rise tonight to raise the impact of poker machines on the Tasmanian community. First, let me congratulate Michael Ferguson for naming the pokies barons who have so much influence over this government and its policies in his state of the state contribution yesterday. Mr Ferguson said, ‘I was continually appalled, but not surprised, at the behaviour of some in the gambling lobby.’ He sees the industry, despite their massive profits, lobbying for still more. Mr Ferguson remains committed to mandatory precommitment cards in the public interest. In fact, he has vowed it so. He also reassured the House that the Premier would be, too. Is that true?
In October last year, the Greens asked the Premier if he had sold out Tasmania and made a secret deal with the pokies lobby during the election campaign to abandon mandatory precommitment cards for poker machines. These were the nation-leading reforms that this parliament had committed to in 2022 to help problem gamblers and their families, who also suffer the financial and health impacts of rigged, predatory machines. There are millions lost a year by Tasmanians to pokies. The mandatory card would have set default loss limits of $100 a day, $500 a month, and $5000 a year. These limits were recommended by our own Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission and a range of community advocates, and shown by the gambling industry to be entirely possible.
We asked the Premier multiple times if he had done this deal. He would not deny it and, finally, in November, the Premier admitted he had ditched the precommitment card. He blamed the MaxGaming report but would not release it to the public. He also commissioned a report from Deloitte on social and economic impacts of the card. Again, he would not release the terms of reference, even when the Legislative Council asked him for them. Information had to be drawn out of the government piece by piece. In December, the MaxGaming report was released to the public a few days before Christmas, in an effort to bury it. The Premier had said the report showed the card was too expensive and complex to implement, but we saw none of this in that report. What it showed was the precommitment card was ready to be implemented by Max Gaming. It was planned down to the finest detail. All it needed was the minister to sign off.
Last week, the Greens received another RTO with correspondence on the Deloitte report which fills in more of the blanks. It showed that as far back as January last year, the pokies industry were lobbying for the precommitment card to be dropped. They were using a report that Federal hotels had commissioned back in 2023 from Deloitte.
The Finance minister at the time, Michael Ferguson, was steadfast against the gambling lobby in his letter. He pointed out the issues with their biased report – letters that Mr Ferguson recommitted to in this place yesterday. After this exchange last year, the Federal CEO, Greg Farrell, went crying to daddy, emailing the Premier with their correspondence. What we saw after the election was that at the first possible opportunity Michael Ferguson was removed from the Finance portfolio. In mid-August, his office urgently requested a report from Deloitte on the social and economic impacts of the card. It sounds suspiciously like the report that the pokies lobby had already commissioned from Deloitte. It cost the taxpayers a wasteful and entirely unnecessary $330,000.
We see here why the Legislative Council was not given the terms of reference for this review when they asked. It is because they did not exist, such was the urgency in which the Premier commissioned that report. It is very obvious at this point that they were looking for any way they could to ditch the precommitment card. They wanted to do it quick. In the end, Greens questions exposed the Premier’s deceit before he could use the report as a scapegoat and he blamed it on the Max Gaming Report instead. What reassurance does Mr Ferguson have from the Premier on the precommitment card?
Until now, the only people who can trust the Premier’s word are the pokies lobby because they are the ones who are lining the Liberals’ pockets. They have been controlling things in the state for decades, well before the infamous 2018 election. That was the election that pulled Labor back into line, now continuing to parrot the lines of the pokies lobby and having signed a secret MOU to protect the industry’s profits at the expense of Tasmanians. We do not know exactly how much money the pokies barons have donated because it is hidden behind weak political donation disclosure laws.
The Greens do not take donations for these predatory corporations. We will keep speaking up for vulnerable Tasmanians. We will be keeping a close eye on whether Mr Ferguson or the gambling industry are right on this one. We are backing Mr Ferguson.
