Page 1616 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 July 2020
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The impact of COVID-19 on our clubs has been staggering, and about far more than gaming revenue. Their closures have meant the loss of key places to connect with people in your community. We have lost opportunities for local groups to use club facilities for their meetings and events. Gigs and shows have been cancelled, a huge loss for our dynamic and diverse arts and music sectors.
We want to engage with clubs and we want the government to engage with clubs to seriously consider their ongoing reliance on gambling revenue. Efforts are being made to diversify their revenue; there is no doubt. We applaud those efforts and we want to build on them.
Alliance for Gambling Reform chief advocate Tim Costello says that research shows that $1 million spent on hospitality creates 20 jobs, whereas the same amount going through the pokies creates just three jobs. That is a substantial difference. We should be investigating this and doing what we can to bring community groups more actively back into our community clubs so that we generate those jobs, as well as providing opportunities for our community organisations.
I have little doubt that I am going to hear some pretty harsh words directed our way today, snide comments about our motivation for bringing this motion on—comments designed to shoot the messenger, not address the message. That will be disappointing, because this is about people who are doing it tough, people who have a gambling problem and people who we have a responsibility to deliver harm minimisation for—people like Professor Laurie Brown. I am sure you all remember her.
Laurie was incredibly courageous to come forward and tell her story. Laurie has said:
I could be glued to the machine for six hours at a time. You want a bigger hit, so I gambled at the maximum bets of $5 or $8 or $10—I put lots of money through.
Discussing her experience with the ABC, Laurie said her habit partly became that bad because “there was no intervention when I was actually gambling”. Laurie lost over $230,000 and almost lost her relationship. She has highlighted a lack of intervention and support at the time as a contributor to her problem gambling.
Laurie’s story and the story of the veteran from Victoria, the young man who lost his money and his sense of sense of self in Dee Why RSL—these are the people who are telling us that we need measures to minimise the impacts of gambling harm: measures based on evidence from the Productivity Commission, evidence from experts in this space like the researchers at ANU who undertook the 2019 gambling survey, and evidence from hearing the stories of people’s lived experience and the damage problem gambling can do.
We are not talking about the people who go in and have a flutter on a Friday night while they are waiting for their schnitty to get ready. We are not talking about people who enjoy a bit of gambling. We are talking about people who have an addiction, who have a gambling problem, for whom we should have harm minimisation strategies put in place to provide a safer environment than what is currently provided.
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