Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I thank the honourable member for Nelson for, first of all, bringing on this motion, but also for your excellent and, as always, informative and heartfelt contribution on this matter.
We should not be having to have a debate in the Legislative Council simply to have the government, or the Premier in this instance, release the terms of reference for a publicly funded report. How did it come to this?
How did it come to the Greens in the first instance? On 16 October, after the ministerial reshuffle, going in to ask the Premier – to be honest, it was a slight fishing expedition whether or not the government was still committed to the harm minimisation of mandatory pre‑commitment cards.
And boy, did we have to squeeze out of the Premier, although his words did give him away, that there had been a very significant change of position. And if you look at the timing, we had a state election in March of this year, and –
Ms Webb – An early state election.
Ms O’CONNOR – A state election one year early in March this year and then a referral to or a commissioning of Deloitte Access Economics in a contract that was organised by August, which means it was very quick work after the state election to find a way through in order to appease the industry, and that site yesterday, deja vu all over again of Steve Old standing there looking ever so smug, which is his special skill apart from lobbying and bullying governments into doing what he wants. But he was standing there next to the Premier and obviously he just found his new best friend. The problem is we have a Premier who is a nice guy, but he is a pleaser. That is one of Jeremy Rockliff’s traits. He is a pleaser. You ask him, you look him in the eye, and make the case to him, and he wants to please you.
So here we are, a short time after the state election where there was no honesty from government about how they were going to move away from a harm minimisation scheme recommended by the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission. I remember that debate in November of 2021 in the House of Assembly. We had the Greens in there obviously doing what we have been doing on pokies for decades, which is making the case to get them out of pubs and clubs; independent MP Kristie Johnston, also a champion of the removal of poker machines from pubs and clubs and making sure that there is not that huge and devastating financial impact on communities. We gave the then-Treasurer a very hard time. That debate, I think, went on for eight to nine or 10 hours. We were there for a very long time and the focus was in very significant part – first of all, there was the gift, the additional value that was provided to venues as soon as this new contract would come into place would be about $150 million in extra value of venues. So we did engage with the Treasurer on that gift to the industry, but we hammered him on harm minimisation, question after question, clause after clause.
Ms Forrest – We had it in here too, trying to get a reduction, or an increase – sorry, in the tax paid – the tax rate – and did a power of work on that? It had all the figures. No-one disputed it. The government certainly did not, but no.
Ms O’CONNOR – But what I was going to say is that on the harm minimisation issue, I found minister Ferguson to be very sincere. I still feel that he was going to try to find a path through that allowed him to sleep at night as minister responsible for effectively the extension of this industry beyond a deed.
Michael Ferguson, as Treasurer, was committed to harm minimisation and that is why Steve Old wanted to get rid of him, is it not? That is why Steve Old says this sort of thing about the former Treasurer. Had not been impressed. Not impressed with Mr Ferguson? I will bet that is because Mr Ferguson dug in. I will bet it is, obviously and then Mr Old goes, ‘we have had issues with him for a long time’.
It is not going to be able to happen on the time lines that Mr Ferguson has put in place because from all the information we have heard, it is going to be too costly, it is going to take too long to roll out. He said a lot of things to our industry that did not turn out to be true from the great doyen of truth, Steve Old. Then the kicker, he has his new best friend now you see and his new best friend is the Premier and he said we will put our faith in working with the Premier and his government moving forward.
For any member who has not read James Boyce’s magnificent book, Losing Streak: How Tasmania was gamed by the gambling industry, I highly recommend it. But here we are all over again, an industry that destroyed a government over the planned Launceston casino, brought down a government in 1972-73, an industry that in 2006 helped to fund Tasmanians for a Better Future that got in behind a Labor majority government this time because they are agnostic, Liberal, Labor; they do not care, just so long as they do what the industry wants.
In 2006 we had money from the Farrell family funding a dishonest, ‘you must vote for majority government Save Tasmania campaign’. So, that’s 2006. I can barely talk about the 2018 election without feeling deeply traumatised but that was a corrupt election. I mean, it might have all been lawful, who would know? It was an election that was made filthy, dirty and dishonest by millions of dollars from the gambling industry to buy an outcome and what outcome did they want to buy? And they bought it cheap too. What outcome they wanted? They wanted to re-elect the Gutwein Liberal government that was committed to not ending the deed. That was not going to happen, but turning the deed into a rolling contract with pubs and clubs basically.
So the industry got what it wanted in 2018. It bought an election outcome and overnight, as the honourable member for Nelson’s contribution made clear, as soon as those new arrangements were in place, the industry was doing very well and it is disgusting. It is absolutely disgusting, the naked greed of this industry. More than $500,000 out of the pockets of some of our poorest people goes into those predatory machines.
Steve Old could not give a shit to be honest. Pardon my language. He could not. He does not care. He does not care about the suffering. He does not care about the mental health. He does not care about the kids who are suffering. He does not care about the broken man who came to see our Green stall at the Glenorchy Market sort of 10 to 12 years ago, quivering with shame and fear and self-loathing because he had been down to whatever that golden mile is, where all the pokies are in Glenorchy, the day before. He did not know what he was going to tell his wife because he had lost everything. The mum who was staying up at the Anglicare facility in Burnie, the homelessness support facility, who basically lost her two kids because she had a gambling addiction. Do not call them problem gamblers. They are not problem gamblers; they are addicts and we have created a system that allows that addiction to be fed on a daily basis and here is a chance through a mandatory pre-commitment scheme to restrain, to curb some of that harm. We have the most parasitic hypnotising poker machines in the world in Australia and here in Tasmania. They literally hypnotise people into pouring their last cent in there.
Then we have the 2021 state election. I know it is getting late, but the 2021 state election where we got hold of a letter from the Tasmanian Hospitality Association to the then Labor leader, Rebecca White, demanding, which Labor agreed to by the way, that they change their position, confirming that their position on EGMs had changed and demanding that should Labor make any further adjustments or changes to its EGM policy that it would fully consult with the Tasmanian Hospitality Association.
I cannot remember exactly what the quote from Steve Old was at the time, but the media spoke to him and he sort of like almost slapping his back pocket there, because he had the Labor Party right there in his back pocket. Did it again and here we are again. We should see – we absolutely have a right to see on behalf of the people we represent, the terms of reference for that Deloitte report. It is a fair question to ask why this work, when all the foundational work has been done by the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission, why the Deloitte work was commissioned by the Department of State Growth. They have become a sort of Voldemort department in government, because all the dirty work gets done in State Growth these days, does it not? You want to put a cable car up Kunanyi? Do not let the Minister for Parks or the Parks and Wildlife Service anywhere near it, give the job to State Growth.
Here we have State Growth looking at harm minimisation. I mean, for heaven’s sake, what expertise would or could anyone in State Growth have? The expertise is in the Liquor and Gaming Commission, which consults with the people on the ground who clean up the human mess caused by these machines.
I hope that members support this motion. We have a right to demand these terms of reference. We need to understand what is happening here because it looks like, once again, Tasmania is being gamed by the gambling industry. An industry that can argue it provides many, many jobs and we will never know exactly how many, of course. An industry, which over the course of its slightly over half a century history here, has demonstrated it is a cancer on democracy.
We cannot allow this to happen to us over and over and over again. Steve Old is not the premier of Tasmania. The Tasmanian Hospitality Association should not have a seat at the Cabinet table, but it seems to. We had a minister who stood up to the THA for all his flaws, for all his flaws, and he is gone now.
There is a question to be answered by the Premier. Did he make any promises before or during the last state election to the THA? It sounds like it. It sounds like the THA’s lobbying, which was detailed very precisely by the member for Nelson, started to get to the Premier well before the state election. So, was a commitment made before the March state election this year? How would we know? Because you cannot get an honest answer out of this government on these sorts of issues. The House needs to see the terms of reference for the Deloitte report. How dare the government try to hide that? Having taken a policy position, first of all to the 2018 election, then to the 2021, then to the 2024.
The Tasmanian people were made promises about harm minimisation and an effective card-based player scheme that allowed people to have limits set, and here we are. There is something really smelly happening. We should see the terms of reference for the Deloitte report and I hope members support this motion on behalf of the people we represent.
