Roche Denise: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 04 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4359. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a call for the Greens on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) at its second reading. I am not usually a member of the Government Administration Committee but given that I am the gambling spokesperson I sat in on that committee for this bill in Mojo Mathers’ place. I have to say that it was a well-run committee and I thoroughly enjoyed the robust debates we frequently had there. We received 126 written submissions and heard in person from 33 different submitters. They can be roughly grouped into three different categories. First of all there are the gambling societies and venue operators; second there are those concerned about the impact of gambling on their communities; and third there are the individuals who have been impacted on by gambling as well.I always find it useful when I am looking at a bill particularly an amendment bill to look at the original Act it is amending look at the purpose of the bill and see whether the original Act is going to be impacted on at all by the amendment bill. And that is what I have done in this case as well Mr Assistant Speaker if you will bear with me. The Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) as introduced to the House was described as having the aims and I think there were four of them of increasing transparency of grant-making from the proceeds of class 4 gambling; reducing potential conflict of interest situations between class 4 gambling operators—societies—venues and grant recipients; improving transparency surrounding management companies that provide societies with services such as for example contract negotiation with venues administrative and financial management or grant application processing; simplifying compliance and reduce costs for societies and venue owners in some areas; and lastly the fifth one was ensuring the efficiency of the appeals process is not undermined. It sounds great—this bill sounds great—and actually most submitters agreed that increasing transparency in the grant-making process reducing conflicts of interest improving transparency with management companies and having a more efficient appeals process were all worthy causes. But many submitters shared the concern that I also have about the aim of the bill that is intended to “simplify compliance and reduce costs for societies and venue owners in some areas;” and I will talk about that more in a minute.If we measure the aims up against the original Act the 2003 Gambling Act the purpose—in part; these are just a few of the purposes that I will outline here—is to: “(a) control the growth of gambling; … (b) prevent and minimise harm from gambling including problem gambling; and … (d) facilitate responsible gambling; and … (g) ensure that money from gambling benefits the community;”. Many submitters were extremely worried that if the select committee were to remove the section in the original Act that prohibits commission-based payments for venue operators under the guise of simplifying compliance and reducing costs for societies and venue owners the bill would undermine the original intent of the Act to prevent and minimise gambling harm facilitate responsible gambling and ensure that the money goes to the community. Basically if venues can be paid for by commission there is an incentive for the venue operator to ensure that people continue to gamble as much as possible. It means that host responsibility programmes could easily be compromised by unscrupulous venue operators wanting to maximise the returns on the machines that they have got on their premises.We already know that in class 4 venues host responsibility offered to gamblers on pokie machines can be sadly lacking. Many submitters pointed to the mystery shopper experiment carried out by the compliance teams in the Department of Internal Affairs at the end of last year. This was the experiment where mystery shoppers went to 102 different gambling venues and pretended to display the kind of behaviour that you would see with someone experiencing problems with their gambling or having little control over their gambling behaviour. Only one out of those 102 venues actually intervened and displayed good host responsibility. I think we have to congratulate the Department of Internal Affairs on taking that proactive response on compliance.Hon Ruth Dyson: Not funded enough to do anything else are they?DENISE ROCHE: Yes. Without a doubt the current system of paying venues which is covered by very strict regulations that can be very complicated relies on venue operatorsbeing paid actual reasonable and necessary costs.I also want to note that the Department of Internal Affairs has been very busy since 2009 working with gambling societies on standardising venue cost schedules during what it called its resubmission project. Its 2013 report included recommendations around the calculation ofvenue payments including calling for a full review into initially adjusting limits to cover wage increases and inflation. The recommendations however did not in any way suggest the radical and really risky move of removing the restriction on payingvenues by commission. I note also that the department’s project resulted in the best data it said that it had ever received but it also said that the work it did on that was set aside when it started to work on this bill.I think we have to remember that the money that goes tovenue operators and gambling societies is money that is not going to the community. It is money that is not going to the lifesaving club. It is money that is not going to sports or education organisations. This bill presumably is about wanting to increase the amount of money that the community uses so it does not really make sense to have a commission-based payments system. The Greens are also very concerned about extending licences to operatorsfor 3 years as an incentive for good behaviour. I guess we would feel a whole lot better about that if there had been more pokie venues displaying good behaviour during the mystery shopper experiment. We know that compliance can be very poor in this sector. I would suggest that those provisions in the bill be set aside and put on hold until the industry shows that it can be responsible.When the bill came to the House my colleague Kevin Hague spoke on it as I was away. He said that commission-based payments would be a deal-breaker for the Greens. Despite the convincing arguments from submitters the select committee has by majority decided to keep those provisions in. We will be putting forward Supplementary Order Papers on this issue as will colleagues from Labour because we are really concerned that the venue commission payments system will without a doubt increase problem gambling. We have got an estimated 40 percent of the money—all the money that is lost on pokies—coming from people with little control over their gambling behaviour. This is how the money for communities and charities is made. When we have got 40 percent of that coming from people with gambling problems then I think we need to do better than we are doing in this bill in not opening those people up to more gambling rather than less.Equally bad is the fact that this bill is a lost opportunity to actually really do something about problem gambling—like introducing a pre-commit card system which would allow people without harmful behaviours to have a flutter without the risk of becoming problemgamblers. It would become a huge handbrake for anybody who was at risk of becoming a problemgambler. This is a better and cheaper solution to problemgambling than facial recognition technology which actually acts as a way of stopping people who have already got problem-gambling behaviours. The pokie machines have already sucked them dry. We have lost that opportunity to introduce some good gambling harm prevention measures and things like real-time player tracking which would also look at how people are behaving while they are at the machines.If this Government was serious about dealing with gambling harm then it would take the opportunity to fix what has become a dangerous product. As it stands we cannot support this bill and we encourage every other party to also vote against it.