Article- High-tech ATMs exist ‘only in showroom’
Examiner – Digital Online | 13 October 2026
By Matt Maloney
Tasmania’s leading hospitality lobby has conceded its preferred alternative to a mandatory pre-commitment poker machine gaming card does not exist anywhere outside of a manufacturer’s showroom.
Hospitality Tasmania was one of the main opposing voices to the card, which set daily default loss limits, after it was announced as a harm-minimisation measure in 2022.
The organisation argued that the card did not exist anywhere else in Australia, and as it had not been built, it was untested and unproven. The government paused development of the card in November 2024, and dumped it in January this year in favour of other harm-minimisation measures that have been criticised as “minuscule”.
Under the new changes, ATMs will be introduced into venues with poker machines. a committee examining the new measures has heard Hospitality Tasmania pushed for high-tech ATMs fitted with facial recognition cameras.
Under the proposal, cameras on venue cash machines would scan a patron’s face, the system would generate a unique digital token and that token would lock the user to a strict $400 daily limit, even if they carried multiple bank cards.
Explaining why the hospitality body railed stridently against the card, Hospitality Tasmania gaming regulatory manager Brad Upton said it was too much of a blunt instrument.
“The card didn’t exist,” he said.
“It was planned but never built, tested or operated.”
Independent MLC Meg Webb asked Mr Upton where else biometric ATMs existed in the world.
“Is it in use somewhere that you can point to?” Ms Webb asked.
Mr Upton replied: “In use in the manufacturer’s showroom.”
Anglicare Tasmania chief executive Chris Jones told the committee the government’s harm-minimisation measures were at best minuscule, and that the “gold standard” mandatory pre-commitment card needed to be implemented.
To highlight the human toll of poker machine addiction, Dr Jones shared with the committee the story of a mother who would drop her children at school and spend the day gambling at a venue until pick-up time.
He said despite being well known to venue staff, no intervention took place.
“She ended up taking money that the family needed,” he said.
“She ended up not being able to provide for the children, and the reason that she came to us was the kids had been taken [from her].
“We can prevent that.” Anglicare research indicates that an estimated 57,000 Tasmanians experience flow-on harms from gambling.
Dr Jones said this extended beyond financial losses, such as unpaid rent and skipped medical appointments, to include domestic strain and parental absence.
“You’ve got the absence of the cash, you’ve got the absence of their presence,” Dr Jones said.
“These absences come from the insidious nature of what an addiction to gambling can do.”
Council on the Ageing (COTA) Tasmania chief executive Brigid Wilkinson warned the committee that the state’s soaring older demographic was uniquely exposed to gambling harm, both as players and as targets of coercive family members.
She said with loneliness spiralling for older people in the state, poker machine venues could provide a social connection for some, even though they may have less capacity to recoup losses and rebuild savings than younger players.
“Pensioners don’t get a huge amount anyway as it is,” Ms Wilkinson said.
“When you’re looking at people on fixed incomes … it’s very hard to find other means to top up.”
She said this could be compounded by cognitive impairment that comes with ageing, which would make it difficult for some seniors to track losses, which would otherwise be helped by a pre-commitment card with a default loss limit.
Ms Wilkinson said financial exploitation was one of the top three forms of elder abuse in Tasmania, where an estimated one in six seniors experienced mistreatment.
Ms Wilkinson said a proposal to introduce venue-floor ATMs and scrap mandatory cardbased spending limits directly heightened the coercion risk.
“If an ATM is readily available in close plain sight, it might be a little bit easier for someone to coerce you into going and gaining access to money,” she said.
