You are hereGambling Regulation Amendment (Licensing) Bill
Gambling Regulation Amendment (Licensing) Bill
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) -- I am speaking on clause 1, the purposes of the bill. In terms of the original purpose, which was simply to restructure the industry, this has now gone much wider with the latest amendments. I seek your indulgence to talk about how this bill might support one of the main objectives of the principal act, which is to foster responsible gambling in order to minimise harm caused by problem gambling.
On that, I should say that I hate poker machines. If this was a bill to abolish poker machines from the state of Victoria, not only would I vote for it but I would hire a brass band and lead it down Bourke Street.
By the way, that is not even my party's policy, which is for deep cuts to the number of poker machines such that we can reduce their extent across all our communities to some more limited and manageable locations. Neither of those things is on the table and never has been as a possible matter for me to vote on, so I am in the situation where I have the opportunity to vote for a whole bunch of amendments which will limit gambling-related harm in ways I believe will be significant. However, poker machines will then be established in Victoria for another 10 years from the end of their current entitlement period.
The amendments -- and they have only recently been thrust into my hand -- cover a number of things, although I have of course seen the ideas and some of the content over recent days.
They appear to ban ATMs in poker machine venues after a given date, sometime down the track. I think that is an excellent step. Of course I would like to see it tomorrow, but the fact it is being done at all, with a clear deadline, is a fantastic development that I believe will make a difference, and it is something we should be doing across the country.
Secondly, there is the requirement that all new machines at a certain date and all machines in Victoria after a certain date will have to have available and fitted to them a precommitment mechanism. It is not specified how that will work, but the features of it and its functions are specified. That is also important, because it is the equivalent of fitting seatbelts in all cars. When Victoria led the way in seatbelt legislation we know the rest of the world followed. There are not too many jurisdictions around the world where this particular safety mechanism for gaming machines is available.
There are only a few that I have heard of, and I believe most of those are at an more of a trial level.
However, it will not be compulsory to wear the seatbelts; it will not be compulsory that in order to play you will have to use this mechanism; but the mechanism will be available. We have never argued that this mechanism would be used to set your time or loss limit for you -- in other words, you will get to choose both of those options. You may choose a very high one, but it is still limited by the amount of time you are able to sit at a machine and the amount of money you are prepared to lose.
Our contention is that the value of this mechanism the government is now putting forward in this amendment is that it will allow people, before they sit down in front of the machine, to make a decision about how much they are prepared to lose and how long a period they are prepared to lose it over.
That is based on recent and well-understood clinical research that suggests that in front of the machine and under its spell, if you like, people -- even normal people and not just people with some sort of susceptibility -- start to experience a loss of control. It is an excellent step. We believe it would be compulsory that you would have to use the mechanism, even though you would still be setting your own time and loss limits.
On the issue of entitlements for small clubs, since the time that a set of representations were made to us by the clubs, we have been in agreement and we have pursued with the government the idea of a pre-entitlement of machines that clubs would have allocated to them at a given price.
When that discussion changed from a percentage of all clubs current entitlements to an actual raw number of machines, we saw that not only could it protect small clubs but it could also protect communities from the possibility -- some say unlikely, but we say unwarranted -- that hotels or aggressive large clubs could bid into a capped area, or an area in other words limited in terms of its number of machines, and actually grab 100 per cent of the machines.
As representatives of the northern and western suburbs, which contain many of the capped areas -- although some of them are in rural towns in the west and east -- that was a real concern to us. The purpose of the cap could be lost in areas where there is the threat of gambling-related harm but where current profits are high because of the number of vulnerable people there, because a more aggressive bidder could make much more money out of the same number of machines under the cap. That was our rationale for pursuing that particular issue.
We did not get everything we wanted out of this, but there are benefits here across the community.
Click on the link below to see the following back and forth regarding crucial amendments for the Bill.
