Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to acknowledge and say that I respect the advocacy of the member for Denison in the area of gambling. I think we both have the same goals in mind, but we disagree, perhaps, on how we should go about it.

I think it is wrong to focus on the money the gambling industry gets as losses. I think we should acknowledge that there are many people that find gambling a legitimate recreational activity. I would find no enjoyment sitting in a club playing a poker machine. But I should not put my values and judgements against people who find that to be a legitimate recreational activity. People may well look upon other recreational activities, whether they be ten-pin bowling or golf, as being of no particular value inherent to society. Rather than looking at it as money lost, let's look at the money that is actually spent on the gambling industry and, rather than looking at it from a position of prohibitions and stopping and aborting things, let's look at it as a legitimate business. Let's try and put legislation in place there that we would for all other types of industries.

If you look at the losses that the member for Denison brought out for us, you will see that the amount of money that the average Australian spends on gambling is quite shocking. The latest numbers I have seen is something like $1,130 per adult. If you go through those numbers, you will see that we are spending more than double the amount on gambling, per average adult, of nations like Canada, the USA, New Zealand and the UK. The expenditure on gambling here per adult in this nation is five times more than it is in somewhere like Germany and, if you look at where most of the gambling money is going, you will see that it is on poker machines. I can pick up my mobile phone and I can bet on anything anywhere around the world. I have an electronic slot machine on my phone, so I do not think we can hide this from our kids. Gambling has become, for better or worse or for right or wrong, a part of Australian culture.

Rather than trying to ban it and rather than trying to hide it from kids, I say it would be best to do the opposite. In school we should be using percentages and probability for gambling to teach kids about gambling, because understanding the maths behind it would be the best cure we could put through to make sure that kids do not go on to lose money. I say that if you understand the odds of rolling a dice or a playing a poker machine, then that is the best cure we could have. Also, when it comes to poker machines, again, there is nothing wrong with someone deciding that they like to sit and play a poker machine. The problem we have is the cost for someone to play, and that gets back to the price. The price is on the rate of return to the player, and the volatility. The poker machine industry is one of the few industries where there is no price competition. You can walk into any club in Australia and you can have two machines lined up side by side that can be identical in every respect, but they can adjust the settings on the machines and you would have no idea which one gives you the greatest return. Those returns should be clearly advertised on the front of the machine. If we could reduce that margin through price competition, as we do in every other sector of the economy, that would be one way of reducing the harm.

The other thing I would quickly like to bring up is that I understand that the class-action lawyers Morris Blackburn currently have a case claiming that the design of poker machines is misleading in their intent. I think there could be something to this. A recent article by DHL Piper talked about how all modern slot machines use some variation of what is called the 'Telnaes patent'. If you go to the actual patent application, you will see that it says:

… it is important to make a machine that is perceived to present greater chances of payoff than it actually has within the legal limitations that games of chance must operate.

The patent application actually has an admission in there that the design of a modern poker machine is meant to make a customer believe something that is false! This will be a very interesting case that this parliament will be watching with great interest. Again, I commend the member for Denison on his work, but I cannot support this motion. (Time expired)

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