Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

To the member for Denison: I share his concern about problem gambling and I share his concern about the impact that it has on family lives. I agree with him that reasonable people would want to see, through this parliament, laws that would assist people deal with the scourge of problem gambling. Reasonable people would want to see that. The government does want to see legislation—and it would be the biggest package of legislation to deal with problem gambling ever brought before a national parliament—which would require precommitment technology to be available on every one of Australia's 200,000 poker machines. We do want to see technology that would assist people on those machines to monitor and set limits on how much they are spending. We do want to see legislation that would require new electronic warnings on poker machines and that would limit cash withdrawals from ATMs in pokies venues to $250. We also want to see a large-scale trial of mandatory precommitment in the ACT and we have such a trial agreed in principle with the clubs in the ACT. I would want to see this parliament legislate on problem gambling in the terms I have just outlined but it does require people to make a decision in favour of the community's interest because the community is concerned about problem gambling. Unfortunately, every step of the way, as usual, we have seen the relentless negativity of the opposition.

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