The Australian pub industry and registered clubs are in a state of deep panic over two bills which have been presented in the Senate by Senator Steve Fielding of Family First.
When Fielding introduced the Poker Machine Harm Reduction Tax (Administration) Bill on February 14 and the Poker Machine Harm Minimisation Bill on June 19, they passed under the radar of the media and the liquor and gaming industries.
But Fielding’s motives became clearer with a Sky TV interview in which he said his aim was to ban all pokies from Australia’s pubs and clubs in 10 years. In future, he said, pokies should be confined to dedicated gambling venues such as casinos and race tracks.
Now the liquor industries have fine tooth-combed the two bills and found to their horror that the Fielding plan spells financial doom for pubs and clubs and revenue disaster for state governments which have become dependent on the gaming tax dollar.
Here are just some of the proposals in Fielding’s poker machine harm minimization legislation:
- Poker machines to be re-engineered to accept a maximum $20 note bet. NSW machines currently accept $100 notes.
- Poker machines to be modified to accept no more than $100 of credit at a time. NSW machines currently allowed up to $10,000 at a time.
- Poker machines in future to have no more than one pay line. Current machines have up to 25 pay lines.
- Poker machines to allow a maximum of a $1 bet per spin. In NSW the current max bet is $10 per spin.
- The maximum jackpot to be limited to $1,000. The current maximum in NSW is $10,000.
- Future machines to be adjusted to have a spin rate of five seconds. NSW machines currently have a faster 3.5 second spin rate.
- ATMs in pubs and clubs to pay out a maximum $100 per cardholder per day.
To put these measures into some kind of perspective, consider this:
If the bet is reduced from $10 to $1 (a 90 per cent reduction), the game spin is slowed from 3.5 seconds to 5 seconds (a 30 per cent reduction), the amount that can be fed into a poker machine reduced from $10,000 to $100 at a time (a 99 per cent reduction) and note acceptors reduced from $100 to $20 (an 80 per cent reduction), these combined measures would reduce gambling revenue by half.
In the 2006-2007 financial year, the NSW Government received $1.1 billion from poker machine tax. This would be halved.
In his harm minimization tax legislation, Fielding proposes a new Commonwealth tax on gross gaming revenue in 2009 of 1 per cent, growing to 4 per cent in 2012, 10 per cent in 2015 and then 5 per cent per year until it reaches a maximum of 30 per cent.
A spokesman for the NSW liquor and gaming industry told Crikey that Fielding’s taxation schedule and his plans to modify poker machines would devastate pubs and clubs and wipe many of them out of existence.
Each year Australians put more than $7 billion of their hard-earned into pokies in pubs and clubs, a figure which is a national scandal.
While every right-thinking person wants an end to Australia’s pokie addiction, Fielding’s plan is shallow populism. Let’s see what Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull can do about it.
11 thoughts on “Blow up the pokies… but not at the expense of the pub”
Libby Mitchell
September 19, 2008 at 11:06 pm“Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” – Rev. Martin Luther King …
http://www.stoppredatorygambling.org
While we all argue the fine print and delay…the gambling industry is laughing all the way to the bank! Check that web site…a US group has hit it on the head….Predatory gambling invades our human rights….!! Nick Xenophon at least had the guts to tell the gambling industry that it was unethical and uncaring…greedy to the core! Fielding is at least trying to save massive numbers (never admitted…but they know the “1-2% harmed only” figures are incorrect..!) citizens from harm…whilst reducing an industry without killing it completely. What are YOU adding here to debate Alex?
It is a bloody disgrace if Australia cannot survive without bleeding its citizens to death! You should be ashamed of yourself Alex….you are being as trite, dismissive and simplistic as they (our governments and gambling industry) are in attacking the problems of poker machine harms.
I am SO sick of hearing the Pro-Pokies mob telling citizens to be ‘responsible’….when clearly they themselves are NOT!! They know that our prevailing attitudes towards gambling and gambling addicts are based on old values centuries old….yet we are dealing with a modern, rapaciously efficient, killer industry here….it is not just a matter of frowning on a game of ‘two up’ beind the pub!
WE need to learn about this predatory industry…disguising its dangerous products as ‘mere games’!
Please check that site out and add your name to the list of supporters? Join it and let’s attack the issue globally? Let’s start a real conversation…but please Alex do not accuse ME now of ‘shallow popularism’ either…if anything YOU are the one playing up to the majority audience! And in a very shallow way at that!
Mac
September 19, 2008 at 2:38 pmsend
A. Adams
September 19, 2008 at 3:18 pmAfter calling our pokie addiction a “national scandal” I expected Alex Mitchell to praise Fielding’s plan with a “Hooray.” Instead he calls it “shallow populism.” It doesn’t compute, Alex. What’s your plan to rectify the scandal?
Ian McAuley
September 19, 2008 at 3:06 pmOK — state governments might lose some pokie tax, but what people don’t put through pokies they will spend elsewhere, and state governments pick up the GST. And will pubs necessarily lose out? Not if they can attract back those patrons who have been turned away by pokies?
Lisa Crago
September 24, 2008 at 9:52 amReally badly written piece. I too am still trying to ‘get’ the ‘point’. Most of our local pubs have been taken over by Woolworths – Food petrol and now pokies and booze. Even the USA does not allow such takeovers. Our local RSLdoes not have pokie machines and it is a wonderful place to have a quiet drink and chat. Naturally this RSL is more interested in its patrons than shareholders.
I choose not to gamble. At 45yrs my cousin put his last $300 in a poker machine and then killed himself. A middle aged man with children who gambled his life away.
JamesK
September 20, 2008 at 6:42 pmLibby Mitchell, I realise this may come as an enormous and earth shatteringly mortifying insight for you but:
1. Crikey has little or no reputation for honesty.
2.”acute” means neither precise nor accurate
This problem is a ‘chronic’ disease of addiction to money by state governments, pubs and clubs.
5 – 15% of gamblers are problem gamblers depending on the game. It is an enormous problem for our society with huge costs (much indirect and hidden) to society.
Instead of lauding them, I notice Crikey mostly belittles Xenophon and Fielding.
And where is Rudd with his righteous indignation, evident on this subject during the election campaign?….. Perhaps awaiting one of his myriad committees to report? Or has state Labor got to him as with the Murray?
Richard Wolff
September 20, 2008 at 10:53 amAlex, to quote you, the industry is in ” a state of deep panic” over 2 Private Senators Bills. That is your opening words, with alarmist comments about the sky is falling. That is scaremongering and shows no empathy for the players or families or small communities shattered by the growth of this plague like product. One of Crikeys writers, Andrew Bartlett just wrote this week on Crikey how hard it would be for Private Senators Bills to actually become law ! It will take the full support of the Rudd Government to get anywhere at all ! Crikey has surprisingly not stepped up on the good work done by Senator Xenator Xenophon and Fielding until the chance to slap them in the face in this article. The community in Australia, and NZ and other countries is entitled to be protected from the harm pokies cause by the Government elected to protect them. But with windfall gains to revenue, the separation of duties to raise needed revenue, and protect the community is held by the same people. That is why the Federal Government must now enter the arena. Also, reflecting the community values, a new website http://www.makepokiessafe.com has been established to centralise the concerns of the community and provide a central source of information for the community. Just this week, a 700 million class-action has commenced in Quebec against Loto Quebec for knowingly encouraging the use of highly addictive video lottery terminal (VLT) technology. And NZ commences mandatory screen messages from 1 July 2009 on all pokies.
Usually denial followed by regret is something pokies players go through when they hit rock bottom. But this week, former Queensland Premier Wayne Goss said he regretted introducing the pokies scourge.
Let us hope the Senate Inquiry here uses the opportunity to shackle a genie that should never have been let out of the bottle and that denial leads more quickly to regret and action.
John D
September 19, 2008 at 2:38 pmWhy is Fieldings approach “cheap populism”? To label it as such is a small minded retort. Rather than throw stones at a not unreasonable solution Alex, what do you have to offer? Your final paragraphs are the most telling… $7 B wasted on pokies per annum – more often than not by the very people that least afford to lose the money. It breaks up families, causes suicides, and in terms of net harm, is a far greater destroyer than heroin. Perhaps if the pubs cannot survive without these infernal family wrecking machines, they could just start selling smack instead?
Would that be OK with you?
Chris
September 19, 2008 at 1:51 pmStrangely the pubs are alive and kicking in WA … with no pokies in sight.
Perhaps the people who really need to kick their addiction to gambling is the State Governments?
Xenophon seems to have a much better idea about where to go on Pokies than Fielding – which isn’t the least bit surprising…
Libby Mitchell
September 20, 2008 at 11:15 amWhew!
Richard Wolff…”Let us hope the Senate Inquiry here uses the opportunity to shackle a genie that should never have been let out of the bottle and that denial leads more quickly to regret and action”.
What a great way of putting it!
So now let’s act upon it please Crikey…before you lose your reputation for honesty and acute appraisal of political / social / economic issues…totally?