Poker Machine Licencing Motion

Ms WEBB (Nelson) – Mr President, I move –

(1) That the Legislative Council notes:

(a) Australia (with the exception of Western Australia), has an approach to poker machine policy and regulation that is significantly different to virtually all similar countries globally, resulting in Australia having:

(i) a disproportionately high number of poker machines per capita;
(ii) a typical style of poker machine that is regarded as ‘high intensity’; and
(iii) a comparatively high level of harm due to the use of poer machines.

(b) Poker machines typically in use in Australia are designed and programmed to include features that increase the likelihood of addiction, with evidence suggesting that normal use of Australian poker machines is likely to cause addiction in one in six users, these features relate to 

(i) spin speed;
(ii) bet limits;
(iii) maximum jackpot;
(iv) near misses;
(v) losses disguised as wins; and
(vi) return to player.

(c) It is possible to modify the design and programming features of poker machines to decrease the likelihood of addiction, and such modifications would have little impact on the recreational use of poker machines by Tasmanians.

(d) The impact of harm caused by poker machine use on Tasmanian health and mental health services, family support services, welfare services, criminal justice system, domestic violence services, housing and homelessness services, productivity and level of unemployment, is not currently measured and monitored by the Tasmanian Government so as to effectively inform policy development and regulation relating to poker machines.

(e) Data available on poker machine use indicates 

(i) at least 23 000 Tasmanians are in at-risk groups (low, moderate and problem gambling
(ii) one in three Tasmanians personally know someone with a serious problem with gambling on poker machines;
(iii) 79 per cent of Tasmanian Gamblers Help clients have poker machines as their primary form of gambling; and
(iv) 40 to 60 per cent of the money taken by poker machines comes from people addicted to the machines or are classified as at-risk.

(f) The Social and Economic Impact Study – SEIS – 2017 notes limitations to the collection of accurate and reliable data in Tasmania on –

(i) the use of poker machines, including accurate frequency and expenditure; and
(ii) employment figures related to poker machines in hotels and clubs.

(g) To date, the Tasmanian Government has not released and made available for public scrutiny and discussion, modelling on the social and economic impact of the proposed new poker machine licensing arrangements to be introduced in Tasmania in 2023.

(2) The Legislative Council calls on the Tasmanian Government to undertake and publicly release modelling on the social and economic impact of the proposed new poker machine licensing arrangements to be introduced in Tasmania in 2023.

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Mr President, I begin by acknowledging the Mouheneener people as the original owners and custodians the land on which we meet today, nipaluna, Hobart, of lutruwita, Tasmania. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging, and I pay my respects to any member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community here today. I acknowledge the continued connection the Aboriginal community has with this land, despite invasion and dispossession.

I am speaking today in circumstances that are very different to what I had hoped and imagined we might have at the time of this motion. We are in the midst of an uncertain and very serious health epidemic that casts a certain light on all the discussions we have and it changes the way we feel about being here and having discussions of any sort.

We are all concerned about the health situation playing out in our communities, in our families and for ourselves. We are also concerned about the flow-on impacts of this situation we find ourselves in. We do not know what is going to happen to the businesses in our state, to the activities we involve ourselves in, to the way our future might look six months from now. I am very mindful of that as I stand here.

I am particularly mindful of vulnerable people at this time. That is a concern shared by many. There are many people in our community who will be finding this time especially difficult, and their lives will be made even more challenging by the changes to normal, everyday routines, by the stress and anxiety that is caused and by the things that will be asked of them. That will play out in many ways in many families, and information is already being made available to people for extra support services and extra forms of assistance that might be needed in this time.

What this shows us is startling – the interconnection of any issue we might talk about – but it links well to one of the points in my motion that we will discuss today; matters to do with poker machine regulation do not sit in isolation. The way we choose to deal with this product and the way we choose to support people who we know are harmed by it are not things that sit separate to the other core issues of our lives, things like our housing situations, our finances, our employment, our health, our mental wellbeing, our children’s lives, their education and their future; all these matters are interconnected. We see that clearly playing out in this crisis.

With these interconnections highlighted so starkly, it shows us that if we fall down in our responsibilities in one area it makes it all that much harder to weather a crisis. We find people who have already been left behind in some sense being further harmed, disadvantaged or left behind.

This morning, when I was doing some radio I made a call that something we should be thinking about as a key of health and social measure is closing gaming venues in this state right now and for the foreseeable future, just the gaming rooms.

Across the next few weeks, the people sitting in front of those machines will not be recreational players; it will not be the people who might be popping in on a Saturday night as part of a greater and more enjoyable activity. Anybody sitting in front of a poker machine over the next short while is going to be somebody who has a problem with that machine, somebody who is addicted to that machine, or at risk of addiction. Their health will be immediately and directly impacted by sitting there, interacting with that piece of equipment and perhaps in proximity with others, even more. Their long-term wellbeing will also be in jeopardy as they continue to lose money to those machines because of the issue they have.

At a time when we are providing stimulus to our community to try to keep our economy ticking along, and provide good economic benefit to a range of areas of our economy, the last place we want to see that stimulus go is into a poker machine.

I called for that on the radio this morning. I am very pleased to note that the message came out mid-morning that one of the measures that will be considered in federal Cabinet this afternoon and that may be included in protective measures is the closing of gaming room venues. That would be great to see and would be beneficial for our state on many levels. I am mindful that people are feeling very uncertain and wary today, even here in this Chamber. There is an awkwardness to the arrangements we have around us, and people may be coming and going and finding it difficult to engage with this motion.

I have modified my speech on the hop to try to help accommodate the awkwardness of that and have this process be given what I believe is the prominence, the respect and the honour it deserves of a really decent conversation, while being mindful of our present situation and people’s uncertainty and concerns. I have modified a hard copy on the hop and I may, at times, be struggling to keep a thread if I am skipping past pages I have cut out. I thank you in advance for your forbearance.

Mr President, I first began to learn about our state’s policy and regulatory arrangements regarding poker machines in late 2015. At that time, I had recently started working at Anglicare Tasmania as the Manager of its Social Action and Research Centre. While poker machines were a very new area of public policy to me it was an area of longstanding research, policy development, advocacy and campaigning for Anglicare. In fact, over close to three decades Anglicare has published dozens of research reports, policy documents, submissions and resources on the issue of poker machine policy and regulation.

Because of the circumstances in late 2015, matters relating to poker machine reform became a very large part of my paid work role. Over the course of the intervening years, I believe I can lay claim now to being probably one of the most well-informed people in this state on this topic. I say that with particular deference to the superior knowledge of my Anglicare colleague, Margie Law, and to the unique scholarship of Dr James Boyce on this topic along with a handful of others who have longstanding experience and insight.

In addition to the knowledge and experience built in my work over this time, I have also developed a personal, passionate commitment to the potential for positive reform of poker machine policy and regulation in this state of Tasmania. It is a result of both my expertise and personal commitment I have tabled this motion for us to consider today.

It is timely for us as an upper House to take this opportunity to consider the matters covered in this motion. Tasmania is at an important juncture on this issue. We have an opportunity from 2023 to reshape this policy and regulatory arrangement relating to poker machines in this state. Our Chamber will have a key role to play in the decisions made towards that reshaping and this year we will be called on to participate in that decision-making.

The upper House has historically played a very important role at similar moments. It is because of the scrutiny, consideration and rigorous debate by the upper House that the gaming commission was established in Tasmania; that the Community Support Levy was funded and the regular social and economic impact studies were initiated. Each of these were important contributions made by this Chamber and now the Legislative Council has important work to do again.

I acknowledge right now that perhaps there will be people in this room, or listening, personally experiencing harm caused by poker machines. To those people I acknowledge the difficulties today’s discussion may present. I apologise for the pain it may cause. While we will be talking facts and figures for you this is a painful reality lived every day. It has been impossible for me to have listened these past four-and-a-half years to the personal stories and not be struck to the very core of my heart by the pain and waste resulted from the presence of this product in our state under the circumstances we allow it to exist.

In speaking here today I plan to recognise and honour that pain which affects so many Tasmanian families. I will make sure we do not just discuss the facts and the figures, but we also directly hear the voices of those who are living this. Although it might be awkward with the adjustments I have made in my speech I am trying to make sure those parts will be retained.

The motion I put to the Chamber in the first instance makes a point about Australia and how it compares with the rest of the world. My motion asks the Council to note Australia – with the exception of Western Australia – has an approach to poker machine policy and regulation significantly different from similar countries. Australia has a high total number of poker machines and higher numbers of pokies per capita, higher bet limits, higher maximum payouts and higher losses per capita. I will provide details on each of those points briefly.

First, let us look at higher numbers of pokies per capita. Most of the figures I am about to share come from the Gaming Technologies Association that produces the world count of gaming machines annually. To start with it is important to note not that not all states and countries permit poker machines. Our local example in Australia is Western Australia. They are permitted only in casino environments not local communities. Other countries and other states in other countries have many similar arrangements, either not allowing them at all or allowing under certain circumstances such as in destination gambling venues.

Looking at the total raw number of machines, Australia ranks sixth by country behind Japan the United States, Germany, Italy and Spain – all countries that have significantly higher populations than Australia. With 0.3 per cent of the world’s population, Australia has close to 20 per cent of the world’s poker machines. This means when we look at the per capita figures worldwide we are exceeded only by gambling resort destinations such as Macau, Monaco and the Caribbean.

I am going to talk about high intensity. Australia and Tasmanian machines are also different from those you would find in most other countries. They are what is called higher intensity. What does that mean? In simple terms it refers to how fast you can play and how much money you can lose. Technology means the intensity of all poker machines can be programmed by altering various key functions that relate to how fast and how much money you can lose.

These features include bet limits, spin speeds, jackpot limits and more. In the simplest terms, the higher these features are set the higher the intensity of the machine. Because all the features are programmable, each country or state is able to decide what rules and regulations it will set to determine intensity of the machines in their jurisdiction. We will talk more about these features at further points in my motion.

Compared to other countries in Australia our machines are a particularly high intensity. A small example is in the United Kingdom. Venues they define as being closest to the community have very low maximum bet limits of 17 cents and jackpots of $14 are allowed. They step it up a bit in their machines in pubs. In the UK, a pub can have a machine with a maximum bet limit of $2 and a maximum payout of less than equivalent $200. Higher losses in pubs but generally still unable to be devastating losses.

To compare the poker machines, whereas the UK has a $2 bet limit in Tasmania it is $5. Our maximum payout is set at $25 000; the UK is only $200. For further comparisons you can refer to a table Anglicare presented in its supplementary submission to the joint parliamentary inquiry in 2017.

Another quick example of global comparison in terms of jackpot limits is that maximum jackpot limits for poker machines in hotels and clubs here in Australia varies between $10 000 in New South Wales and South Australia, up to $25 000 Northern Territory and Tasmania, and no specified limit at all in the ACT, Queensland and Victoria.

Other countries deal with this quite differently. We have heard about the UK with the $200 limit. New Zealand allows $1000, Quebec with $1000, and Ireland at the other end of the scale with $1. These figures show Australia is a global outlier in regards to the intensity of the machines we allow especially in our community-based venues. We see that result in the level of losses we permit.

The motion mentions higher levels of harm. There are challenges to directly compare the level of harm caused by gambling. This is because of a number of factors. First, the way the harm is defined is different in different jurisdictions. Second, the way the harm is measured is different in different jurisdictions, and third, there is a lack of data measuring the co-morbidity of gambling harm with other issues. That is something we will talk more about in this motion.

What can we look at to give us a good picture of the level of harm? It might seem most obvious to compare the prevalence rates for problem gambling between jurisdictions. As I will explain further later on, this is particularly difficult to do and is acknowledged as fairly inaccurate. Other broad indicators we can use for the level of harm includes the level of losses and the accessibility of the machines.

Having heard about the comparatively high number of machines that are located here in Australia, including Tasmania, and the comparative intensity of those machines, members will not be surprised to hear that Australia also leads the world in gambling losses. According to The Economist, Australians lose almost double the amount lost by New Zealanders, Americans, Canadians and Brits. It is even worse when we look just at poker machine losses from community venues. In pubs and clubs, Australians lose three times as much as New Zealanders and Finns, and six times more than Americans and Brits.

If you would like to see more comparisons, I commend a report to you – which I believe Anglicare provided to all members last week – that contains even further details of these comparisons.

Mr Valentine – In fact they had two or three attachments to that email. Very interesting reading.

Ms WEBB – Indeed. I am going to talk about the matter in the motion, which is point (b). It is about the machines being designed to addict. In fact, the motion says poker machines typically in use in Australia are designed and programmed to include features that increase the likelihood of addiction, with evidence suggesting that normal use of Australian poker machines is likely to cause addiction in one in six users. These features relate to spin speed, bet limits, maximum jackpots, near misses, losses disguised as wins and returns to player.

Poker machines are computers; there is no skill involved. They are programmed by their owners to make money for their owners. They are advertised as fun and entertaining, yet our gaming commission says they can take $600 from a patron in an hour, every hour, remembering that some of our gambling venues are allowed to be open 20 hours a day. It is no accident that poker machines are addictive. The features that make them so are carefully researched, thoroughly understood and purposefully included in the machine design.

Len Ainsworth, founder of Aristocrat, the leading Australian and world leading pokies manufacturer, told ABC’s Four Corners in 2000 that the secret to the success of poker machines was, and I quote, ‘building a better mousetrap’.

Let us think on that for a moment. The manufacturers of poker machines are, by their own proud admission, purposefully building human mousetraps and making them more effective. This deadly analogy is no accident. I will quote from Anglicare’s supplementary submission to the parliamentary inquiry in 2017, where on page 11 of that submission they say –

Machine designers describe two polar opposites in the way people use machines, with many gradations in between. There are action, jackpot or play-to-win people who are willing to lose large amounts of money for the hope of winning the jackpot. For play-to-win people the industry designs machines with dramatic spikes in its payout model to allow occasional large payouts, and where the payout reaches zero relatively quickly, that is the person runs out of money quickly.

Their report continues –

The industry also designs drip-feed machines for what it calls escape, time-on- device or play-to-win-to-play people. These machines are programmed to dispense constant small payouts, known as ‘reinforcements’ in psychology that nibble away at a person’s money until it is all gone. As a poker machine game designer explains, the industry thinks some people ‘want to be bled slowly’.

I note that analogies to mice come up, not infrequently, in talking about poker machines. We have a mousetrap; we are talking about nibbling. I think it will come up again. No wonder people get trapped, lose money, lose their homes, lose their families and, ultimately, lose their lives when they interact with this machine.

As one Tasmanian told Anglicare, ‘I do not know why I gamble. I cannot win. There is something that draws me to the machines.’ Yes, there is. Machines are designed to drip-feed and keep you sitting in front of them. It allows time for those one in six people whose normal use of this product will lead to an addiction.

The addiction is, in fact, a chemical one. It is driven by the moment of anticipation that occurs when you use a poker machine. It is not even the result, itself, that drives it – the win or the loss – but the few seconds during which the game is in play and the person anticipates the result. During those moments of anticipation, the chemical dopamine is released in that person’s brain.

Mr President, you may be well aware that is the chemical that makes you feel rather good. It is the chemical that is associated with most forms of addiction. We have all seen videos, I am sure, of little white mice pressing buttons to give themselves repeated hits of dopamine. Those mice kept pressing the button, forgetting to eat and drink, and ultimately putting their lives at risk.

Poker machines are exactly the same principle. Pressing a button generates continuous moments of anticipation, which releases hits of dopamine in the brain, and keeps the person in the zone. That zone is a place that takes a person away from all of their day-to-day worries and problems.

People who have a history of trauma, or who are experiencing stress in their lives, are particularly vulnerable to developing an addiction to poker machines, because of the relief provided by ‘the zone’. The greatest tragedy is that the temporary relief that it provides comes at a cost that is too often ultimately ruinous to that person’s life. That is why I am particularly concerned that at times of extraordinary stress and uncertainty, such as the one we are in now, people who are perhaps approaching developing a problem – teetering on the edge of developing a problem – may well be pushed by the extra stress and anxiety further into the likelihood of that happening.

Let us now look at the specifics of those programmable features of the machines that contribute to the likelihood of addiction. I am going to try to speak about them briefly. I have cut material out, so we will see if we can get through it.

Spin speeds and bet limits: these are the parameters of the poker machine’s computer that set up how quickly people will lose money. It is not rocket science. The faster the spin speed and the higher the bet limit, the more money the machine is able to take quickly. Our gaming commission here in Tasmania says that with Tasmania’s current settings of a $5 maximum bet limit and a three- second spin rate, a person can lose $600 in an hour if they continuously press the button and continuously lose.

Granted, this is a theoretical maximum, because the machines have special features that play side games, meaning the person is not always pressing the button. However, it is possible, under the settings that we have allowed the machines to have.

Our gaming commission has recommended over many years, including most recently to the parliamentary inquiry in 2017, that Tasmanian spin speed settings should be slowed to six seconds, and the maximum bet limit should be reduced to $1. Doing this would reduce the maximum theoretical loss from $600 an hour to $60 an hour. That is a ten-fold reduction. It is substantial. Just those two simplest of adjustments would make an incredible difference to the safety, health, wellbeing, and in fact the lives of tens of thousands of Tasmanians.

Why then have Tasmanian governments, including this current Gutwein Government, not acted on this straightforward evidence-based, expert advice from the independent body established in our state to provide policy guidance to government? No doubt that is an uncomfortable question. I will be interested to hear an answer to it from my colleagues who represent the Government here today.

What explanation or rationale could there possibly be to not support small adjustments, which do not detract from recreational use, but make an enormous difference to the harm caused to vulnerable players? Surely that would be like not supporting speed limits on our roads or the installation of airbags in our cars, both of which do not affect normal driving, but provide for more safety on our roads to prevent crashes, and a much-reduced likelihood of harm to those in a car if a crash were to occur.

Imagine, if an industry relied on half its profit from speeding and crashing. The poker machine industry in Australia and in Tasmania takes half their profit from people who are being harmed by the gambling, people who are speeding and crashing, half their profits. That is why the large industry operators in Tasmania opposed these measures. I am going to correct that – ‘opposed’ is far too mild a word. The industry fights these measures tooth and nail, ferociously as if their lives depended on it. But they don’t, it is their extra profits that depend on it. It is vulnerable Tasmanians’ lives that depend on it.

Big industry operators know these simple effective measures will work. They work without doubt to significantly reduce the harm caused and that means industry profits will go down. Which brings us back to my uncomfortable question: why would Tasmanian governments, including this current Government, not have acted on this straightforward, evidence-based expert advice and implemented responsible public policy in the best interests of the Tasmanian people?

It is because they are making a clear choice. They choose to prioritise industry super profits over Tasmanian lives. Literally, the only reason to refuse to introduce these measures is to preserve the current level of industry super profits.

Every Tasmanian government that has chosen over the previous 23 years to not implement these simple harm reduction measures is responsible for Tasmanian lives being lost. In a crisis, we see today the central importance of government taking responsible evidence-informed measures to protect our community. Imagine what would happen if government just pretended to do this, just paid lip service to the measures they knew would work. Yet the Government’s very own consultation paper currently out in the community for comment right now on its proposed regulatory framework says, and I quote –

While the Government’s Future Gaming Market policy does not propose any specific changes to the harm minimisation framework, harm minimisation has continued to be front of mind during the development of the changes to be introduced under the new arrangements. The Government and the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission will closely observe and monitor the operation of EGMs in Tasmania in the restructured gaming market and will act quickly to address any harm concerns.

Why on earth would the Tasmanian people believe this to be true when it has certainly not been true to date? This statement from the consultation paper, along with numerous others, amounts to nothing less than gaslighting the Tasmanian community on this issue. ‘Closely observe and monitor’, ‘act quickly to address any harm concerns’ – they are pretending to protect us. They have not done any of that to date. They do not propose to do that in the material they have presented us to date. Why would we believe that could be true?

The reality is the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission has closely monitored and observed the operation of poker machines in Tasmania for over two decades and has regularly and explicitly raised concerns about the level of harm. In doing so, it has formed clear, evidence-based views on measures which would produce a genuine reduction in harm to Tasmanians. These views presented to governments past and present have been almost entirely ignored. Virtually the only harm minimisation measures allowed to be adopted in Tasmania are those approved by the Federal Group and THA as the most influential players in that industry.

We find ourselves at a crucial moment where, yet again, this parliament will be the decision- maker on behalf of the Tasmanian people in determining our public policy approach to poker- machines. Yet again, we find the Gutwein Government has turned its back on the best expert advice and is making the choice to put the super profits of industry ahead of Tasmanian lives.

I move on to maximum jackpot and return to player rates. I will not speak in detail about these. I had some quite technical notes to speak to and I will put them aside and suggest that if members have questions about these aspects, such that they cannot support my motion, I would be happy to address them in a summing up at the end.

We have mentioned jackpots already. They affect the intensity of the machine and they affect the losses and the addictive nature of the machine. The return to player rate can be set and programmed. It can be mandated through regulation. We could make improvements to both those things.

Similarly, I speak to the last two in that short list under point (b), which is about near misses and losses disguised as wins. I will not need to speak in too much detail to these. In many cases they are really just what is on the page. We group them together because they are features of the machines that are designed to specifically suck people in, to keep them sitting there. The industry calls these features the drip-feed techniques, as I described earlier.

You can find a lot of material and analysis of these features of the machines from Dr Charles Livingstone who also spoke to the parliamentary inquiry in 2017. He makes these very technical and mathematical aspects of the machines as accessible as I have ever found them to be, at least.

Point (c) in the motion states that it is possible to modify the design and programming features of poker machines to decrease the likelihood of addiction, such that modifications would have little impact on the recreational use of poker machines by Tasmanians. From our discussions so far today, I trust that members here will have a clear sense that there are a multitude of ways that it is possible for us to make poker machines in Tasmania safer and less harmful.

The primary way, chosen by most of the rest of the world, is to only put poker machines in destination gambling venues such as casinos. To me, this remains the best indicated, first choice for Tasmania when the current licence ends in 2023. It could be readily supported as a planned restructure of that industry. Independent modelling has shown that it would be an economic boost to our state and a net creator of hundreds of jobs. It would bring Tasmania into line with Western Australia and we could look to that state, with its comparatively low levels of pokies harm, to see where our state would be headed.

For the purpose of the discussion today, let us say we forgo our best first choice and retain poker machines in Tasmanian hotels and clubs after 2023. Even if this is our choice, there is so much we can then choose to do to make their use safer. Public policy and legislative decision- makers may argue that it is our primary responsibility to do so. We seem to readily accept this responsibility when it comes to other policy areas, especially when there is a serious impact on health and wellbeing.

I am going to think about road safety here. I see a real mismatch in our approach to the responsibilities of our role in poker machine regulation compared to our approach to road safety. When it comes to road safety we do not discuss the opportunity for harm minimisation with the argument that only a small percentage of people are seriously harmed, so we do not have to think about some of the indicated measures that experts might advise.

We approach these issues on road safety broadly, across the community, across sectors. We make great efforts across all levels of government to make our roads safer and set rules to help us use them safely, such as speed limits. Many people do not reach the limit. They drive along slower because it suits them, but for those who want to drive fast, the speed limit is there as a safety barrier to protect them and to protect us. This is sensible decision-making in the best interests of the whole community. Yet, more people are seriously harmed by pokies in Tasmania than by cars.

Just as we must do everything we can to reduce death and injuries on the roads, why would we not do everything we can in the same way for poker machines? We can choose whether to continue licensing this product and the conditions under which we send it out into our communities. This year in parliament we have that task ahead of us.

I suggest to members that each of us here must answer an ethical question. As a decision- maker, if I am aware that these machines can be made considerably safer for my community, what role will I play to make sure this is done? From our discussion today and from material you have been provided and have access to, ‘aware’ is precisely what each of us will be. There is so much local research on how Tasmanian poker machines can be modified to make them safer – from our gaming commission, from the Productivity Commission, from numerous academics and of course from local groups like Anglicare Tasmania.

I commend to this place a report that Anglicare has provided that we spoke of already, particularly the report they wrote for the minister, Mr Ferguson, providing evidence for a variety of consumer protection measures. Their proposal builds on the work of the Productivity Commission on our Government’s own social and economic impact studies and on our Liquor and Gaming Commission’s advice and recommendations.

Another thing to ask ourselves would be, is there a downside to adjusting those programming features of poker machines such as spin speeds, bet limits, jackpot levels, return-to-player rates, near misses and losses disguised as wins? The short answer is no. We can make these modifications with little, if any, impact on the so-called recreational gambler but with a significant reduction in harm to those who gamble regularly and harmfully. Research backs up the claim that recreational players will not be disadvantaged by changes we might make.

Let us break that down a bit more specifically from the research to be clear. We can use the $1 bet limit as an example.

Here in Tasmania our social and economic impact studies that happen every three years provide some insight. From our SEIS in 2014 it was found that more than half the people who identify as having a gambling problem sometimes, usually or always, spend more than $1 per push. In contrast, more than half the people who gamble recreationally, rarely or never spend more than $1 per spin. The study found the mean spend by people with a gambling problem is $4 per spin so the introduction of a $1 bet limit would reduce their mean spend by $3 for every push, cutting the harm by three quarters right there.

Earlier research interstate found the $1 bet limit would reduce time and money spent by problem gamblers while not inconveniencing recreational gamblers. They drive under the speed limit already, Mr President.

The 2012 Tasmanian House of Assembly inquiry into the proposed $1 bet limit, which had been supported at one time by the Tasmanian Liberal Party, found that 85 per cent of people already bet at or below $1 per spin. It is those Tasmanians in the 15 per cent who spend more than $1 who will be protected by introducing this limit, not inconvenienced.

I am going to move on to part (d) of the motion which notes that the impact of harm caused by poker machine use on Tasmanian health and mental health services, family support services, welfare services, criminal justice services, domestic violence services, housing and homelessness services, productivity and level of unemployment is not currently measured and monitored by the Tasmanian Government so as to effectively inform policy development and regulation relating to poker machines.

This is a key point; it is the interrelation that I spoke about in my introduction. Poker machine use does not exist in a vacuum. Evidence, which we will talk about briefly, points to the fact that it is connected to many other issues and challenges that people in our community face. While research and evidence make these connections, our policymaking fails to do that at this point because we do not equip ourselves with the best understanding of what these connections look like.

Each time we sat here in the Chamber in the second half of last year, I asked numerous questions relating to data we might have as a state on some of these connections. I wanted to know what information, data or measurements the Tasmanian Government had at its disposal that might inform us of the connections between gambling harm and other service systems and allow us to make better connected policy decisions across those spaces. Most of those questions I asked remain unanswered on our Notice Paper. Even today, of the answers provided, none of them were in relation to those questions that I asked late last year.

I received one prompt reply though. That was from the Minister for Mental Health and Wellbeing. In summary he indicated that of the questions I asked that related to mental health issues the answers indicated that no informative data is collected on the proven connection that exists in that policy area between gambling harm and mental health issues.

Without answers to the questions I can only believe that there will probably be a similar lack of data that is collected and a subsequent lack of policy consideration that is informed of the impact of poker machine harm in all of these other areas of government responsibility. But I have yet to receive it, so we will wait and see.

In the absence of data from the Tasmanian Government, I am going to address these matters today with what we know from research. More importantly, I will share with you stories from real Tasmanians about their experiences that illustrate these connections. These stories I will tell are snippets from research and advocacy and service provision from across the state.

Some of them also come from an open letter to the public during 2016 and 2017. It is an open letter to the then premier, Mr Hodgman. People could sign to support the open letter and they could also make a personal comment if they wished to add to that letter. A total of 6663 people signed that open letter in 2017. More than 1000 Tasmanians chose to put a personal comment with it. The stories and the matters that those comments cover are really informative. I want to draw on some of those today too.

First, let us talk about health and mental health, briefly. Productivity Commission research, as well as the Australian Medical Association and the Public Health Association, all concur that gambling harm is associated with poor health outcomes. People with severe gambling problems have been found to have an incidence of poor health that is twice that of people experiencing low- level gambling problems. That is comparing people who are all in a category of risk. Even between low-level harm gamblers and severe gambling problems, there is a doubling of poor health outcomes.

As one Tasmanian describes, ‘I would feel washed out. My blood pressure would go up, my sugar would go up. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat. I would have starved if my sister didn’t help me out’.

Gambling problems may precede or be a cause of depression and anxiety. About 50 per cent of people with gambling problems experience depression. Around one in five people harmed by gambling report that they are often or always feeling depressed because of gambling.

The Productivity Commission also found that almost all people seeking counselling help for gambling suffer depression. We should expect these impacts would affect service delivery in our health and mental health sectors.

In terms of mental illness, here we all understand people with a serious mental illness can experience a high level of social isolation and find it extremely difficult to participate in the community at times. Research finds an insidious aspect of gambling on poker machines is that it appears to offer people a social activity, an escape from loneliness and often their only chance for social interaction. As one research participant said –

I have had a mini break down recently. I am on anti-depressants just to keep myself on a level playing field. When I am on that level playing field I know the machines are evil. I want to keep away from them but the minute I run out of my medication I am back down there because I am hearing those tunes and they are calling to me and I can’t seem to help it.

I am going to touch onto the issue of suicide. Before I do, anyone who feels they require some support is strongly encouraged to ring Lifeline. The number is 131114.

The Productivity Commission found 60 per cent of people in gambling counselling had contemplated suicide because of their gambling. Ten per cent of people in gambling counselling had attempted suicide. One Tasmanian shared her story:

One night I had gone through about $4 000. I had a packet of Valium and a packet of Seropax. I couldn’t tell [my husband] how much I had lost, so I took the whole lot of the tablets. He took me to hospital and at that stage he didn’t know why I had taken the tablets.

This lady was hospitalised and tried self-exclusion, but she had returned to the pokies at the local again –

[My sister and I] would talk on the way there about playing on the machines and on the way home we would talk suicide. What are we going to do?

Let us look at the impact on families. First, relationship stress and breakdown. The Productivity Commission found nearly 20 per cent of people with gambling problems felt they did not spend enough time with their family and 42 per cent of people with gambling problems had argued with family over the money in the last year.

The survey also found people with a gambling problem experienced higher rates of relationship breakups than people who do not have gambling problems. A partner of someone who could not control his gambling on pokies told researchers –

… I won’t talk to [my partner]. I will say that I am not keeping him for the fortnight and remind him he won’t get paid for another fortnight. I will get the kids things and I will go without myself so the kids have things. We just won’t talk and we will have a bad relationship.

Another person who gambled said this –

I can’t hold down a relationship because of gambling. I will say that I am just down the road to get some milk or bread and will find myself at an Oasis venue and lose all track of time … I broke up with the mother of my children because of my gambling.

This next experience seems to sum it up –

It’s almost like there are 2 worlds – normal people and people with various addictions. I class myself as a normal person but my family look upon me as just ## the gambler. I feel the spotlight is just on that part of me…

Then he explained the effect his gambling had on his family –

… [gambling] has wrecked everything. My marriage has gone and I have been divorced since the end of 1999. We had properties together but they have gone and been sold off. I am currently bankrupt and have been for 3 years. It is pretty awful … [My wife] had an inkling but it all came out in the divorce proceedings. We get along fine but the reality is the whole world I had is now gone.

This quote is from a man who lives in the seat of Windermere who wrote to the Premier in an open letter –

My wife had a diagnosed mental issue and secretly ran a debt through a financial institution in my name. She wasted almost $10,000. I am now divorced from her. The various vendors at different pubs and clubs were not interested in helping her and paid lip service to responsible gambling. I could no longer trust her. She said that she felt totally alone whilst being served drinks. No one bothered her. Someone should have. These machines and those that benefit financially, not the punter, are largely responsible for my surrogate debt and the destruction of my marriage.

Mr President, we hear coming from these voices comments people freely provided just a couple of years ago when they wanted the then premier, but really all decision-makers, to better understand what the picture looks like in this state.

Ms WEBB (Nelson) – Madam Deputy President, earlier I was speaking on point (5), the impact of harm caused by poker machine use in Tasmania on other areas of our service systems. I had noted that we do not have a great deal of data available from the Government that show the links that are there. I am speaking to the research and what it tells us about these links. I am also illustrating that with a range of stories and comments made by Tasmanian people. I had been speaking about relationships as an area of difficulty, and that would be something that would tally through to our family support systems, to our family court systems, child protection, those sorts of areas.

I will follow on from talking about relationships and those impacts, and I am going to talk about domestic violence. I am not going to share stories here. Let me clearly state that the underlying cause of family violence is gender inequality and gender-based discrimination in our culture and our community. This is a really complex area, and to discuss and make claims about factors which contribute to causation is problematic. What I will do is share with you some research we have that provides some indication that there is a link between poker machines and domestic violence.

National research, which included Janet Patford from Tasmania as a researcher and Tasmanian data, found half of those receiving treatment for problem gambling reported an experience of domestic violence in the previous 12 months, either as survivors or as perpetrators.

Research in Victoria, which looked at a nine-year period, found a direct link between the accessibility of poker machines and family violence. This research by Markham found areas with no poker machines had 20 per cent fewer family violence incidents and 30 per cent fewer assaults overall compared to areas with at least 75 poker machines per 10 000 people. That was the comparison; no poker machines and at least 75 per 10 000 people. I believe that is a similar ratio that we may have in Tasmania, statewide.

The recommendation from this research from Victoria was for family violence to be considered when licensing decisions are made in relation to poker machines. Here in Tasmania, we should consider poker machine licences in the context of our state’s domestic violence framework. We have devoted a lot of attention and investment and real community focus to addressing domestic violence. We should consider reducing accessibility to poker machines through reducing opening hours, for example, and reducing the number of machines, particularly the number of machines or venues concentrated in certain areas. We could remove them entirely from particular suburbs or from suburbs, broadly, which would be my preference.

We could decide to look at our family violence figures and map them against our poker machine distribution. Perhaps we need to think about reducing access to poker machines in particular areas. What I am suggesting is that we have an opportunity to consider this in a structured way. The best way to do that would be to apply the community interest test, now available to us. We could apply that community interest test to each of the new licences the Government proposes to give individual venues in 2023. The Government has dismissed this option on no credible grounds, I would suggest.

We have a current single licence for operating poker machines, which ends in 2023. The new model will mean new licences to be issued. The community interest test is there to be applied to new licences, so every individual license proposed under the new model should have a community interest test applied. It would be within that context that we could consider matters such as domestic violence and a range of others. Local communities, including local governments and other leadership organisations, could have a role to play in having input into the granting or otherwise of those licences. To not apply the community interest tests to the new licences to be given to venues after 2023 would be a further disenfranchisement of the Tasmanian community. It takes away communities’ rights to have their voice heard and have a say in the future of what goes on in their local suburb. That is exactly what the community interest test is supposed to be about; giving communities that say.

I am going to move on to housing and finances. Housing and homelessness, really, but it connects to finances. Gambling can cost a lot of money, yet surveys often show more than half of people who gambled did so because of a dream of winning, but for people who develop problems with gambling there is usually no point in a win. As one man in Tasmania described –

[My biggest win] was about $500 or $600 dollars I think … [I didn’t spend it that night] but the next morning I was back at the pub … There is no point to a big win because I put it all back in.

This man explains further –

When I was 21, I had nine cars, one boat and I owned everything. Now I have absolutely nothing. You do win, you can win, but in the long run you don’t win. It’s just a big, big loss.

It is common for gambling counsellors to see people after they have got a big pay out and that is described in this Tasmanian women’s story –

About 5 years ago I did $80 000 in 2 ½ months … I had just finished work and got a payout … I was taking out $2,000 a day at one stage and couldn’t wait to get near a poker machine.

Here is another quote –

An addicted gambler doesn’t budget. You are sitting there in a world of your own, on another planet. You would walk out with nothing.

Spiralling into debt is well recorded in the research. Here are two Tasmanian stories I will read from Anglicare’s 2005 report, House of Cards.

Ben frequently accessed personal loans and credit card cash advances to pay for his gambling. When he was married and in full-time employment Ben estimates that he spent 20% of his income on gambling. Since his divorce and experiencing period of unemployment and now casual work, Ben’s expenditure on gambling accounts for about 40% of his income. At times he has had difficulty paying rent.

Ben said, and I quote –

I probably had about 9 personal loans at one time and about 10 credit cards. At a peak time, personal loans were probably about $80,000, credit cards probably about $30,000 – $35,000 … Because the creditors were after dollars, my car has been repossessed and my credit cards.

Another woman told Anglicare –

As well as the depression, because you have got no money to stay there and play, you have got no money to feed the children. You have got no money to buy the medication they need for their asthma or whatever and you’ve got no money to pay your rent or electricity bill or telephone or your car registration or whatever and, it is like, ‘What do I do now? How am I going to cover this?’ Well maybe if I scrounge a few dollars from your kids’ bank account you can at least buy some bread and milk and they can have toast or whatever. Or maybe you have built up a reasonable sort of credit rating, and so you can go and borrow a couple of hundred dollars to buy your groceries or pay your bill or whatever. But then you are still way behind the eight ball because it still takes you so many months to pay the money back that you have borrowed and you never catch up in your own self-respect, your own mind and your financial situation. You never get that back.

Although the data is patchy it is estimated at least 10 per cent of the demand for homelessness services is a result of gambling harm. The Productivity Commission estimates people who do not have a problem with gambling spent less than 2 per cent of their household income on gambling while people with a gambling problem spend 22 per cent.

As we well know, it is hard enough in this state to pay the rent or a mortgage, let alone when a fifth of your income is already been taken. Research from academics in the University of Sheffield have looked at homelessness problems among over 50s. They did a study in Boston Massachusetts, Melbourne, Australia and four English cities. This was interesting because it revealed patterns of homelessness in over 50s to be quite broadly similar across those three separate continents except
in Australia where a link between homelessness and gambling was identified that did not exist in the other study areas involved.

Of the 125 homeless people from Australia surveyed as part of that study, 38 per cent mentioned gambling as a cause of their homelessness problems. In England and Massachusetts, in the study, only 4 per cent cited this as a reason.

I am going to speak now about work. It is not hard to imagine that gambling affects people’s work. Gambling problems will have a flow-on effect to productivity, maintaining and gaining employment. In this state this is an important issue for us to consider. About half the people in gambling counselling report losing time from work or study due to gambling. People could also be at work but not concentrating due to the stress of their gambling losses. A Tasmanian man describes this –

I went into hospital with internal bleeding from an ulcer due to the stress of it. Also, when I was working –

He mentions his profession but I am not going to –

My mind was not fully on the job and so I injured myself and spent a week in hospital as a result of that –

Here is a quote from another person –

The thing is you would have 2 personalities. Like at work I’d be happy in everything. I was in customer service and you wouldn’t tell anyone at work you would hide it all. You wouldn’t say anything you would keep it to yourself.

Here in Tasmania we do not have a good understanding of the impact that poker machine harm is having on our levels of employment, underemployment and productivity. Certainly, the fact an increasing number of Tasmanians are underemployed and would be experiencing stress from that situation places them at a heightened risk of poker machine addiction as we will know from the research and evidence.

To talk now about children. It is connected to relationships and to families, but it is also a separate matter for consideration. Again, the Productivity Commission found that for every person with a significant gambling problem, on average 0.6 children are living in the same household. A significant number of participants in the Productivity Commission studies spoke about the impact of their parents’ gambling on them as children when they experienced a sense of neglect as a consequence of insufficient food, or because of family instability due to gambling.

I quote from the Productivity Commission’s report –

The most immediate concern for children’s welfare in problem gambling households is poverty. Problem gambling eats up resources that otherwise would be spent on all household members – from family entertainment, a serviceable car, a pleasant home, holidays, and even food.

The following quotes are from an Anglicare study that illustrate this –

Sometimes, I go into my daughter’s room to get money, but she sleeps with her wallet under her pillow so I can’t get it.

Mr President, you can imagine the shame. This quote makes that shame quite explicit –

The kids have gone hungry and gone without, and that’s where I have realised that it’s not right and I’ve left them at home in my house on their own, doors unlocked so that I can get in quietly when I get home at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. in the morning without waking the neighbourhood.

I have actually left those children at home, where anything could happen to them, to go off and gamble. I am ashamed of that. I am disgusted with myself that I have done that, but the compulsive need has been there to go out and try and get a little bit extra, even though I know I’m not going to get that extra money, I am going to blow it every time.

As a result of all of this I have lost 2 things that are very dear to me. The first is my 14-year-old’s trust in me, because I’ve gone through her bank account and cleaned it out. She earns her own money and I will go into her room when she goes to school and grab every cent I can and I am off down to those pokies again.

She is frightened now, and when she gets her money she goes out and spends it on whatever junk she can find because she knows mum will get it if she doesn’t.

She can’t hide it; she can’t take it to school, she’s not allowed. And I have lost my own self-respect. I want those things back and I am finding it very hard to earn those things back, and I am trying my hardest.

Mr President, that is a really confronting story to hear. That woman was incredibly brave and vulnerable to share that story.

It is tempting, I think, for a lot of people to then blame individuals for the sorts of choices it appears that parents might be making with stories like that. What I am encouraging us to look at is the fact that those choices are made within the context that we set and make available to people in our community.

We make these machines available in the community, and we make them available at an intensity that allows people to devastate their lives, and their children’s lives, to that extent.

We do not have to do that. We could choose differently for our community and people. Our fellow Tasmanians would not have to be faced with that situation and those choices, when they are experiencing a medically diagnosable addiction.

The very last thing I am going to talk about in this section is crime.

Again, there is a dearth of data on this issue in this state. SEIS did actually look at the effects, to some extent, of gambling on crime in Tasmania in one year. It was prompted by Anglicare releasing their research, Nothing Left to Lose, in 2010. That Nothing Left to Lose report found –

Ordinary people are doing things they would not ordinarily do, that is, committing serious crimes because of a gambling problem that leaves them with nothing left to lose.

The report looked at 41 cases heard in the Supreme Court of Tasmania over six years in the early 2000s. Half of the offenders had no prior convictions. There are numerous statements by judges that the gambling left them nowhere to turn. There was comorbidity with drug and alcohol and mental ill health. The crimes were serious ones.

What I want to raise here is the role gambling addiction and the easy accessibility of poker machines in many cases played. This is not just a cost to the individual: 35 of the 41 cases saw the person get a custodial sentence. Anglicare calculated, I believe, at the time that the cost to the prison system of just those cases was at least $4 million. There were also the uncounted costs for the police time and the court system. Six of those imprisoned had dependent children. Child protection was then involved.

As one judge said in sentencing –

In common with so many others who have committed like crimes, you deluded yourself that the next gamble would result in a win that would enable you to repay the money that you had taken.

Another judge said –

The catalyst for your offending was your gambling. You began with having just a social bet. You were feeling pressure at work and became depressed. Your rate of gambling increased. You were using it as a stress reliever. Your gambling spiralled out of control and you began to steal to cover the addiction. The stealing escalated over time. You used significant parts of your income on gambling, and additionally borrowed large amounts which were also lost.

Mr President, most of us will recognise elements there we have already talked about today in a typical experience of gambling harm – something that begins with non-harmful behaviour, but because of the nature of the machines, becomes harmful behaviour, both through their accessibility, and the features that actually allow people to become addicted; the fact that we allow those machines to take so much money so quickly.

The Productivity Commission warned us, in fact, that faced with mounting financial difficulties in gambling-related debts when all these legal sources of gambling funds are exhausted, problem gamblers may then resort to illegal activities to obtain money. It is right therefore for us to consider that, when we are making public policy on this product. It is difficult to estimate the number of people with a gambling problem who are committing crimes relating to their gambling, as many people do not admit it, and we do not generally ask them to reveal it in court.

South Australia is an interesting situation. There they have recognised the very tangible connection between gambling and crime. They have introduced a gambling intervention program court. It is one of their therapeutic jurisprudence approaches in their court system. We have some of those here in our state; we do not have one that focuses on gambling. However, in South Australia they introduced that program.

It provides the opportunity for somebody who has committed a crime that was related to their gambling problem to engage with monitored assistance and behavioural change programs. The participant must attend court regularly. The magistrate reviews their progress and encourages the participant to keep heading in the right direction, and warns them if they do not, they may then well go to a custodial sentence.

All types of gambling are treated through that court. The program provides support and case management, access to services such as housing and financial, employment and relationship counselling.

I am looking at an article that was written two years after the court was established, by one of the magistrates. The magistrate observes that over the past two years, only two participants have failed to complete the program successfully. Much of the success has been attributed to the one- on-one therapy and support that is provided in a range of ways. He notes, I think quite rightly, that South Australia can be proud of having the first and only gambling intervention program court, that it is helping save individuals and families and to prevent reoffending.

I am certain that South Australia is far from perfect in preventing and minimising harm from poker machines. I suspect they are much like here, and other states in the eastern seaboard, where the industry is just as politically influential and powerful. The establishment of that court is at least a clear acknowledgment of the connection between gambling harm and the social issues. It is an acknowledgment of the broader cost of that harm.

Clearly, if we focus on first principles, it is better to avoid a problem, rather than manage it after the fact. Effective and compassionate intervention programs are to be applauded, but it is a failure of good policymaking to neglect to first fully implement the suite of straightforward, evidence-based expert advice prevention measures that we may know to be available.

I know that many of the stories and voices I have shared today have been shocking. Some of them have been very sad. I shared them so that in our discussion we are not to lose sight of the real lives and experiences of Tasmanians who sit at the heart of this issue.

We are encouraged to think by industry of these poker machines as harmless entertainment.
The industry has even equated them to a trip to the movies and an ice cream. That was in the context of a parliamentary inquiry and others may remember that.

We can categorically say that poker machines are a dangerous product and they are regarded that way globally. They are a product that puts health, families, livelihoods and lives at risk. As legislators tasked to establish appropriate policy regulation of this product, how can we, on the one hand, support government investment in health, mental health, suicide prevention, family violence, law and order and employment services and support and, on the other hand, neglect to make every available effort to reduce the risk of harm and the severity of harm that pokies cause to Tasmanian families?

In future, when we look back at these neglected opportunities we have had to reduce harm caused by this product, I think we will do that in the same way that we look back now at the lax and ill-informed regulation on cigarettes in decades past, except that we could have – we should have – learned a valuable lesson from our experience. We should have learned that big industry operators gaining super profits from an addictive product will go to great trouble and expense to block effective regulation of their product.

We should have learned that governments must actively and transparently resist the influence, political and financial, of those big industry operators, but it looks to me like we have not learned those lessons. We will look back at this hand-in-glove relationship between the poker machine industry and the Tasmanian Government that we have seen for many years with horror and incredulity; I believe most Tasmanians already do.

In this Parliament, this Chamber, if we allow yet another opportunity to be forgone for Tasmanians to step away from the tainted influence of a destructive poker machine industry in 2020, shame on all of us. This is a product that will never be on the right side of history but each of us here can be.

Point 1(e)(i) of the motion talks about data, with at least 23 000 Tasmanians in at-risk groups. I need to make a correction. I apologise to members. When I wrote my motion last year I had not yet updated my calculations and my go-to numbers from the most recent SEIS and Census figures. It means my figure of at least 23 000 Tasmanians in at-risk groups is a little out. Unfortunately, with the newer figures, the number is higher.

This is because it is a prevalence across the whole population and our population has grown and, because the prevalence for both problem gambling and low-risk also increased between 2014 and 2017, what we are seeing is the estimated number of Tasmanians in at-risk groups sitting at almost 27 000 Tasmanian people. This consists of about 2300 problem gamblers, 5400 moderate-risk gamblers and a whopping 19 000 Tasmanians who are currently called low-risk gamblers. We will talk more about those categories in a moment.

What is worrying for me and should be worrying for the Government also is that the prevalence for the total of these at-risk groups has increased since the 2014 survey. Prevalence for the most extreme category of problem gambling has also increased since 2014. This is not an indication of a successful approach to harm minimisation. Even if those numbers were to stay steady, I would make the case that this is not an indication of a successful approach to harm minimisation. Despite empty government claims of national best-practice harm minimisation, what we are currently doing is not working – if by using the term ‘working’ we mean reducing harm caused to Tasmanian people.

This Government appears content to benchmark us against the devastating failure of harm minimisation we see in other Australian states. Bizarrely, they regularly trumpet that we are the best of this appalling bad, globally worst, lot. For a start, they can only make this claim by pretending that Western Australia does not exist. I challenge the Government to back its claim of best practice and prove how and where its harm minimisation efforts have led to a reduction of harm in our state. Prove that your approach is working. Make the case. Explain to us why you are content to enable the continuation of increasing levels of problem and at-risk gambling in Tasmania. Make that case.

As I know you will roll out that trite line that Tasmania has, nationally, best practice harm minimisation, I challenge you to add the next line of your argument and then add the line after, which should explain to us with meaningful evidence how your lack of action on proven evidence- informed advice amounts to best practice. Make your case, make it to the Tasmanian people who you disrespect with sound bites to hide policy failure.

I am going to return to prevalence and the way we try to put a number to these at-risk groups because that is what we are looking at in the motion. I will clarify what the at-risk groups mean so that we are clear, as we talk about the numbers, what we mean by them. The SEIS provides this information. It says that both moderate-risk and problem gamblers are more likely to use a poker machine in a pub or club than in a casino, for example. It tells us they are likely to gamble 150 times a year. That is three times a week.

What is also of serious consideration for public policy are those categorised as low-risk gamblers. Low risk is perhaps a misleading description for this category. Despite how it may sound, it does not mean that they are at low risk of a problem. It means that they are already experiencing issues with their gambling but the severity of those issues is so far comparatively low with, say, problem gambling.

Every person in the category that is called low-risk has some concern about their gambling. They might articulate feelings of guilt or they might say they find it hard to stop but they are not gambling three times a week. Their gambling has not yet become uncontrollable. To give you an indication, this low-risk group is described by the SEIS as people who spend about the same on gambling in a year as a typical Tasmanian household does on electricity.

I want to talk a little bit about the second point. It says that one in three Tasmanians personally know someone who has a serious problem gambling on poker machines. It is hard to imagine that we would not set an explicit goal for ourselves to reduce the prevalence and impact of gambling harm in Tasmania, especially when that 2016 survey that was conducted of 1000 people around our state found that one in three Tasmanians personally knew someone with a serious problem with poker machines.

I know that is what the survey showed because I commissioned it. It was an independent survey undertaken by EMRS and we did it because we had been doing surveys for decades that showed at least 80 per cent of people did not feel that poker machines contributed positively to their community and wanted to remove them or reduce them.

We had that figure, we used that figure and it was becoming a tired figure and I wondered what else we could find out. It might give us more of an indication about how many Tasmanians are affected so we surveyed and what we found was this; one in three of us personally knows someone. I will give you some examples of those. This is from a woman who lives in the seat of Rosevears. She wrote, and this was all in the open letter that was sent to the Premier in 2017 –

I know first-hand the trauma wrought by the pokies. My husband drained our joint bank account before his death in September this year. I urge you to remove this scourge our communities.

A man who lives in the seat of Elwick wrote –

My mother has some dementia and lives in a unit in Glenorchy. All she wants to do is go to the Elwick Hotel and lash out on the machines. We cannot stop her and she is very determined to go there as much as possible. Her excuse is she needs something to do but she will not accept help from Veteran Affairs. Get rid of the machines as most people that go to these hotels – the elderly – seem to outnumber the younger people.

Then a woman who is from the seat of Windermere expressed some fear for her mother. She wrote –

My mother took up playing the poker machines in her late 70s. The clubs were very happy to have her visits and her money. She possibly had early signs of dementia and for that reason her gambling was out of control. She lost a lot of money and did not seem to care. For family members who had to watch this behaviour it was terrifying.

Perhaps the first time her mother went to play pokies we might have thought of her as one of the apocryphal nannas who want to have a flutter with her $20. As this lady demonstrates, there is no way to know what will come from a simple flutter for nanna or for anyone else that sits down in front of these machines.

From the seat of Murchison, we had a man write in terms of his sister –

After 20 years of problem gambling my sister committed suicide by overdosing on prescription medication she had become addicted to. In the final 20 years of her life she was in and out of jail on fraud and other related charges. She was desperate to feed her habit.

Also, in Murchison a woman wrote –

I watch my father blow his age pension every fortnight on the pokies. I supply the food and cook his every meal so I know he at least eats every day. He can’t afford to fuel his car up, struggles to pay his car registration. A brother pays his vehicle insurance, another brother pays his house and contents insurance. Pokies are a trap and need to be limited or removed from a lot of areas.

These are the messages that show us what that one in three looks like. They come from our people in our communities. One in three Tasmanians. These Tasmanians are the people whose voices need to be heard when we are talking about regulating in the best interests of our state.

I will talk about the figure of 79 per cent, which is point 1(e) in my motion. Seventy-nine per cent of Tasmanian Gamblers Help clients have poker machines as their primary form of gambling. You do not have to spend too much time on this. It is a straightforward figure. Gambling support collects data from gambling services including the reasons people are there to seek help – 79 per cent of the Tasmanian people seeking help for harm by pokies.

These numbers tell us exactly what is happening here in our community, yet there is still this perception that persists of sports betting or online gambling as being huge problems that should take our attention. The reality is at this time, the numbers tell us it is still poker machines in this state that are the clear and present danger of causing the most damage.

Also, unlike sports betting and online gambling the licensing and the regulation of poker machines is a matter for state parliaments. It is a matter for us to determine to regulate and to make decisions for our community. While we are quite laterally wondering about the development of new technologies with gambling and have a right to be concerned about increases that may occur in those forms, this need not and should not serve to divert us from our important responsibility when it comes to poker machines.
We can walk and chew gum on this and it is particularly important we do not put aside our responsibility and role when it comes to poker machines, because that is where we can make a tangible difference.

I have discussed the issue of poker machines with thousands of Tasmanians over the last five years and without fail every time I can guarantee somebody will raise the matter of other forms of gambling. There is a lot of misconception about.

The assertion made when I engage with people about it is that if we were to take away people’s access to poker machines they would transfer their problem to another form of gambling. It is a really commonly imagined scenario. I want to be clear here on the record that research tells us it is a false perception. It is actually a wrong thinking. That is not what research tells us happens.

Poker machine addiction, problem gambling on poker machines, is a very particular dynamic. We talked about it earlier. It is to do with the design of the machines, the features that create the moment of anticipation and all those other things. Research has looked into whether the same effect people seek from that addiction would be replicated in other forms and encourage them to move to them. So far, the research tells us no.

This is often used as a bit of a red herring argument by industry and perhaps by others who are pursuing their own interests. It is often though just a genuine question from people in the community. It is worth clearing up and I come back to the data, the 79 per cent. We know only one in 10 people actually seeks help. Even if we are looking at people in our gambling support programs, which that figure does, we are not capturing everybody who is harmed by gambling or poker machine gambling. There are a lot of people who need but are not actually seeking that help yet. The hidden nature of this problem is difficult for us. It makes it difficult for us to discuss it. It makes it difficult for voices of those who are affected to be heard.

There are two things I know about this from working at Anglicare, interacting with frontline services, the workers who are there, who are really engaged with this issue in a very tangible way and the people they assist and support. One of the first things I really learnt quite clearly talking to frontline workers is that it is incredibly hard for people seeking help. They pretty much have to hit rock bottom before they are able to then come and seek help.

Then the process of managing an addiction is incredibly hard. Both counsellors and support workers who assist people to do that are doing a wonderful job. They are very skilled at what they do. But for the person themselves, it is a daily struggle. It is a daily struggle to be climbing the mountain of addiction and facing up to the difficulty every day of not using poker machines.

When they have to be in a local community where those machines are placed everywhere, it is particularly difficult. People addicted to poker machines will tell you they fall asleep hearing pokies jingles and they wake up hearing pokies jingles. Even people in Risdon prison who have had a pokie addiction will tell you that continues throughout the time they are serving their time.

A second thing I learnt from frontline workers is a little bit harder to describe. I will try to summarise it effectively; I find it quite fascinating. Workers develop a relationship with the people who they help. Anglicare has all sorts of services, apart from gambling support, all sorts of other social services. Workers in all those other social services talk about when you form a relationship and develop trust between the person you are assisting and the worker, all sorts of things over time begin to be disclosed. People may disclose things such as mental illness quite readily now. We have normalised this in our community conversations.

Family violence is coming to be disclosed, I am given to understand, more readily now too. We are also quite proactively working as a community around the way we talk about and support this. Workers will talk about people disclosing drug and alcohol issues. That is a challenging thing to disclose. We frame them as a health problem now and offer support in a non-judgmental way. The anecdotal stories I heard from workers more than once show the very deepest thing disclosed after building trust and after time spent assisting and supporting is a poker machine addiction.

It is a pokies addiction that has the most shame, that sits buried and hidden most deeply for people who are experiencing it as a problem, not just for the person who may have the problem, but for their family members. They might be coming for financial counselling because they do not have any money left to pay the bills. They need help to figure out what they are going to do with their budget. Family members who are affected by the issue still feel the shame of it.

I find this really fascinating. I have no research to explain it at all. I would be really keen to see it. The best I can do is probably speculate a little about whether there is a connection to the way we talk about these issues in public, the way we have our public messaging about them and what that means in terms of what you say to the people who are affected by them.

We have done really increasingly well on those other issues I mentioned in improving our public conversation. Then I think about our public messaging about poker machines and about poker machine addiction and the first things that come into my mind, and I am not sure what comes into yours, are things like – ‘gamble responsibly’ and Responsible Gambling Awareness Week and ‘know your odds’ and so on. In each of those cases, the framing of our public messaging makes the person the problem. Even ‘know your odds’ – because if you did not know your odds then it is your fault. Certainly, ‘gamble responsibly’ makes it your fault. It implies you have an issue with that activity and it is the result of a personal failing.

Responsible gambling is a really important concept. It is really important and possible for us to legislate and regulate gambling responsibly. The responsibility element is important for us to attach to our role. It is also really important to attach it to the role of those people who are providing gambling services – the operators. Responsible service of gambling, responsible operation of gambling are the really important concepts to talk about.

If I had a gambling addiction and were told it was my fault for not being responsible, I would have a pretty huge amount of shame and would probably want to keep it pretty hidden too. That is my speculation on that phenomenon.

On providing gambling services responsibly and perhaps tying into this issue around hiding and shame, I want to say something about the visibility of the gambling problem. Staff in pokies pubs know who is having a problem. They know because the person is like that white mouse we talked about earlier and their dopamine hit button. The person who has a problem with gambling comes in every day. They are there before the place opens in the morning. They do not stop to eat or drink and do not go to the toilet. They do not show any satisfaction from a win and just put the win back into the machine and keep going until it is all gone.

The staff know the people they see exhibiting those behaviours and then they see it again the next day when they come and the next day after that. The staff can tell those people have a problem. One Tasmanian describes it really well. This is what they say –

[We would arrive] at 10 o’clock and go home about 4 or 5 pm. Sometimes [we would play pokies for] 5 to 7 hours. Depends on how much money we had. We didn’t even eat or drink tea, coffee or alcohol. I don’t drink. The majority of them sit there for hours.

Another woman says –

No, we wouldn’t even go to the toilet. We would have kept playing the pokies if we had sold things in our houses to get the money.

A man describes spending many hours at the venue –

I have been there when it opens at 9 am and there until it closes at night. I just keep on going back.

The venues where these people, those voices, where they were gambling, they should have noticed them. They should have intervened.

Another man who chased his losses would go to gaming venues as often as could, sometimes three times a day. He would drink the occasional glass of water, but never eat and he would try to last up to four hours without going to the toilet. When he was skipping work, this man would stay at the venue for only a short time; however, he was often surprised by how long he was at the venue for. This is what he says –

[I would play the pokies] until my fingers got sore. You think you have worked out the system because you’re watching them for so long. But that is absolute rubbish. I could do up to $400 in one session but then I would stop because I would be physically exhausted … You think you have been there for 30 minutes but you will have been there for about 3 or 4 hours. It’s really strange.

In all of those stories there were venue staff who could see what was going on. If these patrons had staggered to the bar and slurringly asked for drink, they would not have been served yet what those venue staff were seeing every day was the gambling equivalent of intoxication. Currently, we do not effectively hold venues to account for responsible service of gambling. We give it lip service; it is part of training; it is there in the mandatory code; it is supposed to happen – but when you hear stories like that, and we could go out right now and hear stories like that all over this state attached to every venue, you know it is not working. We are not holding them accountable enough, when it can be seen so very clearly.

We have come to the final data point in the motion, point (1)(e). This is the shortest one yet: 40 to 60 per cent of the money taken by pokies comes from people who have a problem. It is now well accepted that somewhere between 40 to 60 per cent of the losses come from people who are at-risk gamblers. The Productivity Commission, our Tasmanian SEIS, and our gaming commission do not question the fact, so let us take it as a given.

One thing we can note, though, is that half the money – about 40 to 60 per cent – going into machines is coming from a cohort of people who are addicted to the machines. They are the ones who make the most money for the gambling businesses. They are the star customers, they are the ones who are not eating and drinking, they are the ones who are not going to the toilets, they are the ones who are there at 9 a.m. and still there at 2 a.m. maybe. They are the ones who are not being provided with gambling services responsibly.

Moving onto point (1)(f) in the motion, the SEIS. We talked a little earlier about prevalence studies, and now I will explain a bit more about their limitations. I am not an expert in correct methodology and I make no recommendations about this. My main concern is that, given their known limitations, the government continues to misrepresent findings from our prevalence studies. I would like to correct the record on that.

Every three years, the Tasmanian Government funds the Social and Economic Impact Study into Gambling in our state. The prevalence part of the SEIS involves a phone survey to landline and mobile phone numbers. The survey takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete, and you could expect that the more you gamble, the longer you are probably going to be doing the survey, because you will have more details to provide.

How accurate are the prevalence surveys? They are self-reported data, so that is immediately going to present some challenges. Sarah Hare from Queensland’s Schottler Consulting is a well-regarded prevalence study expert. She was in Hobart last year for the National Association of Gambling Studies Conference, and participated in a discussion about prevalence studies. Sarah Hare earns money consulting doing these prevalence studies. She certainly was not suggesting they were of no value at all. What she did say, which has relevance for Tasmania to consider, is that self-reported data are very inaccurate. These surveys ask people to estimate the amount of time and the amount of money they spent gambling in the past year. They need the respondent to provide that information across all sorts of gambling in our gambling prevalence study – pokies, races, Keno and lotteries.

I do not gamble, so for me to gauge what it would be like to respond to such a survey is problematic. I would have to replace it with something I could relate to more easily. I would replace it with, say, something like my alcohol consumption. You can imagine along with me, if you like. If we were doing a prevalence survey about alcohol consumption, these are some of the indicative questions that would look like the gambling ones we might have to answer in that survey.

We would have to answer: how often in the past year have you had an alcoholic drink? How many times did you drink each week? How many times did you drink at home? How many times did you drink in a pub? How many times did you drink at a restaurant? How many drinks would you usually have each time at each of those locations? How much did you usually spend each time?

They are just indicative questions. I do not know the exact format of the questions in our gambling survey, but it would be something like that, so we know where people gambled, how often they gambled at each of those places, and how much they spent. That is what gets presented to us in the SEIS.

As I ran through those questions, I do not know if you were thinking along with me, but what did you think about how you would go with accuracy on the questions? Personally, I would be challenged on two fronts. One would be remembering, but the other one is that I know I get squirmy when my GP asks me to estimate my weekly alcohol consumption – and if I had to answer those detailed questions, I would be pretty far off the mark.

In addition to the questions like those, in gambling surveys there are also screening questions for problem gambling. Things like: How often have you felt guilty about your gambling? How often have you borrowed money for your gambling? From all the answers, the survey then characterises each respondent as a non-gambler, a non-problem gambler, and one of the three ‘at- risk’ groups, so we would fall into one of those categories.

Now, ask yourself: if you did have a problem with gambling, how relaxed do you think you would feel during those 20 minutes or so while a stranger asks you those questions?

Mr President, I do not know about you, but I think I would feel relatively uncomfortable. Sarah Hare, the prevalence expert, agreed with the premise at that conference session last year that it is highly likely that a problem gambler would get distressed and could hang up or refuse to answer questions.

When the Tasmanian survey for the 2017 SEIS was conducted, the same number of people who were ultimately found to be problem gamblers hung up. We do not know why they hung up. It could have been anything. They might not have had time to do the survey. It could have been that they had gambling problems. We will not know. Those people who hung up will not be represented in the data, necessarily.

We could have missed out on the experience of many people who do have a serious gambling problem, because answering a phone survey is just too hard for them. Again, the accuracy of the information on the experiences of problem gamblers is very likely to be under-reported. The SEIS makes it clear that these limitations are there, and that figures are underestimates. That is good. Every time we use those SEIS figures, we should remember those limitations. We should see them as, at best, a minimum indication for problem gambling, not a maximum.

When the government, for many years now, has been talking about the tiny percentage of Tasmanians who are harmed by gambling, and relate that to the SEIS figure of 0.6 per cent of people being problem gamblers, I think they should be honest about their own government’s funded research and say, even just to be slightly more accurate, that it is at least 0.6 per cent of Tasmanians who are problem gamblers. Even that small tweak to language would represent more honesty from the government on those figures.

In fact, there is a different way, and it is an interesting one, that we could get an indication of how much of an underestimate might be in these SEIS figures. We can look at self-reported spend on poker machines in the SEIS, and we can see how that compares to what we know are the actual losses. What people said they spent, when asked on the survey, versus what we know was spent in the same time period, we can extrapolate out from the survey, then compare the two figures. It’s probably a little bit ‘back of the envelope’, but we have given it a crack. We can get the real figures from the Liquor and Gaming Branch’s monthly report and from the gaming commission’s annual report; we have that.

If we extrapolate out from the self-reported spend in the SEIS, we find that it is just about 28 per cent of the actual losses that we know occurred in the same time period; 28 per cent. It is a pretty big underestimation of the spend. It is just giving us a flavour, I guess, of accuracy. Unfortunately, while the SEIS does admit their limitations, they do not adjust for the under- representation. Based on the self-reported figure, the SEIS comes up with a figure that is substantially lower for average losses for Tasmanians than the actual figure. SEIS says about $655 per person; actually, it is probably well over $2000. It is a huge difference.

Particularly interesting, though, was that when you looked at different forms of gambling, where the information was collected in the SEIS, there was not the same underestimation from other forms. It turns out that in answering questions about Keno, the survey respondents’ self-reported spend was pretty close to the actual total spent for Keno. It was actually 92 per cent of the actual total, pretty close – compared to the pokies estimate, which was just 28 per cent.

I wonder if there is a connection there to that element of shame that I spoke about earlier – shame at how much money might be being spent? Perhaps it is more of a link to that experience of losing track of time and awareness that we heard described by some of those addicted gamblers.

I am going to just skip ahead. I think we should always admit that we have limited accuracy to the data of exactly who is being harmed in those prevalence figures. If we admit there is a limitation there, we take it as indicating a certain thing. We acknowledge the underestimation. We believe that it should be higher.

I think it would be good to have a clearer picture. I think if we collected information in association with those other services we talked about earlier, and whether people accessing those services or our service systems also had issues or matters relating to poker machines affecting them, we would find that filled out our picture as well. There are all kinds of ways we could get a picture of what is going on there. I would like to see that set as a goal, that we find tangible and meaningful ways to better paint that picture for ourselves as legislators and regulators and on behalf of the community, so that we know what is going on.

The next point in the motion talks about employment. I put this in here because it was such a matter of discussion. It was such a contentious issue at different times, as we have discussed the issue over the past few years, particularly in the context of the 2018 election campaign and it is one that heightens feelings about this issue. The Anglicare submission to the parliamentary inquiry in 2017 made the point that the Productivity Commission found that the impact of the gambling industry on employment is neutral because, if the gambling industry did not exist or was smaller, money would be spent in other industries where employment would be created.

We could literally take the gambling industry away and the reallocated spending would create the same or more jobs elsewhere that would replace those that may disappear. This was also reinforced in the work of Professor John Mangan. He is an independent economist who provided an independent economic analysis of taking poker machines out of Tasmanian hotels and clubs. That was also provided to the committee in 2017. That report from John Mangan found that there would be a net gain of potentially hundreds of jobs to our state if we were to take poker machines out of pubs and clubs. Even his most pessimistically modelled scenarios showed net job creation for our state.

I take this opportunity to make it quite clear that pokies create no more employment than would otherwise be replaced by gambling money spent elsewhere in the economy. The money spent elsewhere would likely give us more employment, more bang for our buck. Victorian research tells us that for every million dollars spent on poker machines only three jobs are created. For every million dollars spent on beverage service, eight jobs are created. For every million dollars spent on food service, 20 jobs are created. We can see that other key parts of the hotel business and the broader hospitality industry are much larger drivers of employment than poker machines.

The state Government’s SEIS, economics professor John Mangan, the local independent economist John Lawrence from the north-west of this state and academic news sites that reviewed this, like The Conversation and the RMIT ABC Fact Check, all concur on the actual number of jobs in Tasmania that relate to poker machines. Despite all the claims and the figures that fly around, from all those sources, all of them independently concur. They all say there are about 240 full-time equivalent jobs as a result of poker machines in hotels and clubs in Tasmania. That is a little more than a bit over two full-time equivalents on average for each of the pubs and clubs, but that would not be evenly spread.

These are important jobs for those who have them, but it is agreed by all those independent sources and it is confirmed by the Productivity Commission’s findings that, even if poker machines were removed from pubs and clubs in Tasmania, these 240 jobs would not likely be lost because the venues would restructure their business and, in doing so, retain or create additional jobs.

If you wanted to start talking about peripheral jobs as somehow being attached to pokies in pubs, people like the cleaners, delivery drivers or the suppliers, something in the vicinity of 74 per cent of the pubs in Tasmania do not have pokies. Presumably, those 74 per cent of pubs also sustain those very same peripheral jobs. If the pokies pubs no longer had pokies and had to restructure their businesses, perhaps to a model more like the other 74 per cent, they would still support those same peripheral jobs without pokies.

When a major party took the policy to remove poker machines from pubs and clubs to the 2018 election we saw how the poker machine industry responded and it was all, pretty much, centred on this issue of jobs. I am going to use the words of Dr James Boyce to talk about what happened in that campaign in relation to jobs. I want to quote from a recently released paper James has prepared as something of an update, the final chapter, if you will, to his award winning book, Losing Streak.

I understand that James has sent this paper to all parliamentarians, so I know that he is more than happy for people to see it, to share it and for anyone who is interested, to interact with them about it. I commend the paper to all Tasmanians. Dr Boyce brings his historian’s eye, his scrupulous research and his extensive knowledge of the subject to bear. The heading is, ‘2018 Election Campaign: A Mandate for Change’. James writes –

The Liberal party election policy opened with a line adapted from the ‘Love Your Local’ campaign funded by the large poker machine hotels and the Federal Group: ‘The Gaming Industry estimates that around 5000 jobs are at risk if Electronic Gaming Machines are removed from pubs and clubs’.

This employment forecast was repeated by the Treasurer during the election campaign.

The Liberal claim was radically different from the findings of the Social and Economic Impact Study, funded by the government itself, that were released prior to the Liberal policy … (The SEIS was publicly released in early January 2018 but was available to the Government since before Christmas). This found that ‘there are an estimated 240 FTEs employed relating to EGM operation’ in hotels and clubs.

The Liberal claim was also fact checked by the ABC/RMIT Fact Checking Unit and found to be false. This was not surprising given that it included every job in the Federal Group and large pubs, only a small minority of which had anything to do with poker machines, and many of which would benefit from their withdrawal. Thus, for example, every job in the casino was assumed to be impacted, even though the casinos would have a monopoly of poker machines in Tasmania if they were taken out of hotels. The only possible consequence of the ALP giving the casinos a monopoly on poker machines was that poker machine profits would substantially increase in casinos. Just how jobs at the $2000 a night Saffire or other high-end hotels, such as Henry Jones and Macq1, let alone the Federal Groups’ to transport company, were to be negatively impacted by a policy on poker machines was also not explained.

Becher Townsend of Fontpr that developed the campaign told the Fact Check Unit that the employment claims were based on a survey he undertook, in which he asked pubs and clubs with poker machines what the impact on jobs would be if poker machines were withdrawn. Every expert consulted by the Fact Check Unit, as well as everyone who commented on the issue publicly, condemned this patently self-serving methodology. Mr Townsend claimed to the Fact Check Unit that he resorted to the survey in the absence of other data. In fact, the ABS publishes data on this specific question. Furthermore, by legislation – every three years Tasmania undertakes a Social and Economic Impact Study into Gambling. A number of these have addressed this question, not just the most recent one referred to above. All had direct or indirect employment figures in the gambling industry dramatically below the figure suggested.

Even more disturbing is that despite the magnitude of the lies told by the poker machine industry, the stated Liberal party policy and the Treasurer’s commentary during the campaign, went beyond even what the industry itself, what the industry itself claimed.

The Liberals claimed that around 5000 jobs were ‘at risk’. Even the gambling industry only suggested that this number of jobs would be impacted, during the Fact Check investigation, Becher Townsend from Fontpr admitted that the claim that 5100 jobs were ‘at risk’ was incorrect. Yet this was the very claim made by the Liberal Party and the Treasurer.

In going beyond even the outlandish claims made by the poker machine industry itself, the Liberal Party and Peter Gutwein clearly mislead the Tasmanian people.

The grossly exaggerated employment claims were made after the latest facts were available to the Government through the release of the SEIS. Even after the mistake was highlighted, and the Factcheck unit had interviewed Becher Townsend, the Treasurer made no attempt to correct the record. The Liberals policy continued to clearly state and be aggressively sold to the Tasmanian people on the basis that 5000 jobs were ‘at risk’ unless poker machines remained in hotels. Since the SEIS, the authoritative report meant to guide public policy which the Government itself paid for and commissioned, left no doubt that this was incorrect, and the Treasurer refused to amend his position even after the PR firm that invented the ‘5100 jobs impacted’ claim acknowledged these jobs were not ‘at risk’. The Liberal Party cannot be said to have a ‘mandate’ for their poker machine policy. Any mandate is always conditional on accurate policy information being provided to voters.

I am going to end that section there from the paper from James Boyce, although James goes on to point out that was not the only inaccuracy or potential lie provided during that election campaign. There were also claims put Federal Group website that just 24 per cent of gambling expenditure in Tasmania occurred via EGMs in the financial year 2016, whereas the true figure was actually
58.6 per cent.

Claims are made we have fewer pokies per capita than all other Australian states. We actually have more than Victoria and about the national average when you take out New South Wales as the outlier, the saturation that is there. The other thing, of course, was we had a repetition about that prevalence matter, the misrepresenting the prevalence figure, that 99.4 per cent of Tasmanian adults are not problem gamblers. Now, we know that is not true. We know at least 0.6 per cent are problem gamblers, at least. We certainly do not know that 99.4 per cent are not.

The self-serving deliberate lies told by both the industry and the Liberal Party during the 2018 election campaign are actually a disgrace, but they are really a tragedy. To take the issue of jobs in this state, to twist it through lies and fearmongering into a weapon is nothing but the basest political opportunism. All of us here know jobs are a real sore point. They are a vulnerability in this state. Far too many Tasmanians are either out of work, underemployed or are in insecure work, perhaps particularly in the poker machine industry. Many Tasmanians already feel worried about their jobs.

Tasmanians working in pokies pubs and clubs and working in the casino were flat out lied to and manipulated by their employer and by the Liberal Government. Even Tasmanians working in other companies that do business with those pubs, clubs and casinos were lied to, told their livelihoods were also at risk.

I know for a fact that this very month still Federal Group is telling suppliers and associated businesses they should feel scared for their business if the Government’s pokies policy does not go through. While this continues to be a despicable lie, we can in some sense understand a private business attempting at all costs and by any means to hang on to the lucrative super profits it has become accustomed to. I would say the true dishonour here is in what took place with the Liberal Party, its base betrayal of the Tasmanian people and of our democratic foundations, which are now indelible stains on the annals of our state.

I have come to the final part of my motion about the modelling. It is the core and point (1)(g), then number (2) fit together, I will speak to them briefly. Point (1)(g) says –

To date, the Tasmanian Government has not released and made available for public scrutiny and discussion, modelling on the social and economic impact of the proposed new poker machine licensing arrangement to be introduced to Tasmania in 2023.

Then that flows on to point (2) of the motion, which says –

The Legislative Council calls on the Tasmanian Government to undertake and publicly release modelling on the social and economic impact of the proposed new poker machine licensing arrangements to be introduced in Tasmania in 2023.

Late last year, when I tabled this motion, there was very little information about the proposed new model. All we had were a few pages from the Liberal Government election policy, which was essentially identical to the THA/Federal Group proposal tabled at the parliamentary inquiry in 2017.

Only a couple of weeks ago we have seen the Government release a consultation paper on its regulatory framework, which is based on its policy. Submissions close tomorrow on that paper. The material presented to us for consideration in the Government’s consultation paper includes still no modelling or evidence of the likely social or economic impacts of this licensing model and regulatory framework on the Tasmanian poker machine industry, on a broader Tasmanian hospitality industry, on the Tasmanian community, or on the Tasmanian economy overall. None of that is discussed, presented or alluded to.

The consultation paper has no references to sources of evidence, data or research that may have informed the material it presents, or supports the decisions made on the policy and regulatory elements that are there. No indication is given in this paper of the process that was used to develop, first, the policy, and now this regulatory framework. It does not mention any role played by key stakeholders who might have been involved or consulted.

We do not know, for example, from this consultation paper whether all parts of the poker machine industry in the state actually know what is in it, understand what is in it, and endorse it. We do not know that; it does not say that. Consultation questions are absent from the consultation paper. It gives us no indication of where input from the public, or from other key stakeholders, might actually have another opportunity to inform or shape or change what is there. It certainly does not present any overall cost-benefit analysis, for the state, of the proposed changes under the licensing model.

Given these deficiencies, the value – and I would suggest even the authenticity – of this consultation process is in question.

With regard to the Gutwein Government’s policy framework, which the paper seeks to give effect to, the consultation paper explicitly states, ‘matters specific to the Government’s policy itself are out of scope of this consultation process’.

In a Mercury newspaper article yesterday, the Leader of this place is quoted as saying –

We have now taken details of our proposed future gaming market reforms out to the community for open consultation, which is ongoing.

Even Ms Webb is welcome to make a submission.

I would first like to thank the Leader for that invitation – that even I may make a submission. The Leader will be pleased to hear that I have indeed prepared one. In it, I raise over 50 unanswered questions on the material presented and omitted by the Gutwein Government in that consultation paper. I will be making that submission tomorrow. I would also like to take this opportunity to correct the Leader on what she said in her media statement.

The Government’s policy on future gaming market reforms has not, at any stage, been taken to the community for open consultation. It has never been subjected to appropriate scrutiny, assessment and public examination. To date, there have been no details made public on the policy’s development process, nor the evidence base that informs it, nor the social and economic modelling that underpins it, or even on the real policy objectives, in detail, that it aims to achieve.

Let us remind ourselves how we have arrived at this moment, because I think we have skipped some steps. Exactly four years ago today, on 17 March 2016, in a ministerial statement to parliament, Peter Gutwein, then Treasurer, set out a range of principles that were to guide the gaming reform process in Tasmania. A notable point made in his statement that day, four years ago, was this –

The processes that led to the development of the earlier deeds caused concern in the community and cast a shadow over the appropriateness of the structural arrangements. The Government does not want a repeat of this outcome. There needs to be a fully transparent public consultation process that enables interested Tasmanians to have their say on the future structure of the gaming sector post-2023, with the Government’s policy position as the starting point.

On that same day, the former premier Mr Hodgman issued a media release that also emphasised the importance of a transparent process. It said –

Today the Government announced a new way forward for gaming in Tasmania which makes a clean break with the secretive ways of the past.

The Hodgman government and now Gutwein Government have completely failed to honour that statement. There has been no process by which the Government’s policy has been appropriately scrutinised and assessed in an open, public and accountable manner. In fact, interested Tasmanians, as I mentioned, have been specifically excluded from having their say on the Government policy, even in responding to this current consultation paper.

The industry-written proposal, which later was adopted by the Government, is not reflective of the evidence, the findings, or the recommendations made by the joint committee in 2017. The principles were taken to that committee for examination by the government and the committee diligently spent many months going through submission process, hearing processes and consideration of that material based on those principals initially taken to the committee, then they were presented right at the end with that industry proposal which it did not have time to examine.

That industry proposal is what then became government policy, not the principles that were taken to the committee in the first place. So while the committee itself did not have an opportunity to examine that industry proposal dropped at the last minute literally on the table of the committee, they did actually seek some expert advice on it; they sought some expert comment on that industry proposal which subsequently became the government policy; they sought it from the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission and Synergies, the research group that was helping the committee across that time.

The Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission’s thoughts on this industry proposal which became government policy are actually documented; they are documented in the appendix of that committees report. The committee attached it in the appendix and it is on page 201 in appendix D.

The Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission, the independent body that was created to provide expert advice to the Tasmanian Government, actually raised in their assessment of that industry proposal numerous concerns that it was not the most suitable option for our state. They had concerns about individual licensing models. They had concerns about the rates of taxation and many other matters – it is all there to see.

There is nothing to tell us what the government has done with those concerns and all we know is the Government took that proposal upon which concerns had been raised by an expert independent body and now it is the policy that we have before us right now, the policy that we are not allowed to comment on.

I think something is missing from that sequence of events. I think a lot of openness and transparency is missing from that sequence of events. I think there is absolutely no way in which the Tasmanian people or us here as legislators can have confidence that this policy is actually indicated as the best option going forward and is the best option we could hope to achieve on behalf of our community, and we cannot have that confidence because we have never been given the opportunity to examine it. That is simply not good enough.

We need to go back to that step that allows for the Tasmanian community to develop the confidence and the trust that this is the right way forward and that is why in my motion I make the call, there at the bottom, the call that says in point (2) that we call on the Tasmanian Government to undertake and publicly release modelling on this social and economic impacts of the proposed new poker machine licensing arrangements to be introduced to Tasmania in 2023.

Mr Valentine – Can I just have a slight bit of clarity on that? To undertake and publicly release modelling – is it undertake the survey and release the modelling?

Ms WEBB – No, I actually put both those words in there because I am not sure whether they have done it for themselves. We would hope that the government would have modelled what might occur as a result of its policy in various social outcomes and in various economic outcomes and so not just say who gets what in terms of divvying up the thing but if we change to this model what would it mean to our broader hospitality industry, what would it mean to the pubs that do not have
poker machines, what would it mean to our economy overall, those sorts of things – to ask what are we likely to see if we put this in place. I would hope they had done it and that is what has informed their decision-making to produce the policy they have. If they have not done it, I am calling on them to do it. The undertaking part of that is to say, if you have not done it, it should be done – do it, and then release it so we can all see it.

Does that clarify what I mean there?

Mr Valentine – I think it is both modelling and the actual work behind that.

Ms WEBB – Absolutely.

Mr Valentine – I was unclear on that. Thank you.

Ms WEBB – If we just keep it as simple as possible. I want to know how do they know what will come about in terms of social and economic outcomes if this policy is put in place. They should do work and present work that shows us what we could expect. If we do not have that information, certainly for us in considering our job here, how can we do the job we are sent here to do by our communities? How can we undertake the scrutiny? How can we undertake rigorous assessment, holding the Government to account, if we do not have the information available that shows what we could expect to see from this policy? That is the essence of this call.

Mr President, having spent two decades working in the social services sector, public policy, advocacy, research and the past five years talking with thousands of Tasmanians about the harm caused by poker machines in this state, I am deeply concerned we are not just missing an opportunity to make things better, but that we are actively heading towards an outcome that is far worse. It is incumbent upon the Government to demonstrate to the Tasmanian people that is not the case.

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