Page 2814 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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One of the most interesting things about the inquiry was realising very clearly that this whole exercise appears to be largely pointless. I will quote from some evidence we received that is to be found on page 10 of our report:
THE CHAIR: So the total number of machines will stay the same; it is just a question of which club they are in? There is no expectation regarding which premises they are in? There is no expectation of any reduction out of transfers? Is that what you are saying?
Mr Jones: Under the current bill, yes.
MR SMYTH: So under the current bill, the only way you will get machines back and reduce the cap is either a voluntary surrender or when a club closes?
Mr Jones: Or a cancellation; that is right.
MR SMYTH: That is the only way?
Mr Jones: Yes.
And no-one contradicted this. This is the situation. This bill would appear to be window-dressing. It certainly does not appear to be something that is going to make any significant impact on the level of gambling machines in the ACT.
In that context, the Auditor-General in her recent report on problem gambling said that she believed under the current rate of surrender of machines it would take about 26Â years before the number of machines was reduced down to the 4,000 envisaged in this bill. Regardless of whether it is precisely 26 years or not, I think it is fairly clear that this bill is not going to make any significant difference, or possibly no difference, to the number of poker machines in the ACT. I think that is a great pity.
I have some different views about the role of poker machines from the rest of the committee which have led to my dissenting comments. But I am very pleased that the whole committee agreed that there is a problem with problem gambling and poker machines in the ACT. I think we are all united in feeling that more needs to be done to address it.
As members are aware, the regulation of poker machines is a matter of considerable current public debate, principally in the federal sphere where Senator Nick Xenophon and MP Andrew Wilkie are concerned, as are, of course, the Australian Greens. They all support some degree of federal regulation to limit the harmful effects. There are obviously different views as to what that should be. When Mr Barr, who was the minister at the time, introduced the bill to the Assembly, he said:
The government has long held the view that there are too many gaming machines in the territory. As a jurisdiction, we have the highest number of gaming machines per capita in Australia. A number of studies indicate there is a clear link between access to gaming machines and problem gambling.
Given the government’s clear recognition that there is an issue, I was surprised that the bill, when I got to examining it, does not in fact do more. I think we should be
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