Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier today, in my maiden speech, I touched on the subject of electronic gaming machines and, in particular, drew conclusions regarding the design of these machines. I want the House to be aware of a new report commissioned by the Independent Gambling Authority of South Australia. This report, titled The relevance and role of gaming machine games and game features on the play of problem gamblers, is excellent. In particular, it has a great literature review. In many respects this report bells the cat on these machines. It identifies four machines that are disproportionately popular in the problem gambling segment: Indian Dreaming, Dolphin Treasure, Shogun 1 and Shogun 2. What these machines have in common is they all have a high net gaming revenue of around $200,000 per year. In particular, Shogun 2 has an average NGR of $263,501. Dolphin Treasure comes in a bit lower than that, at $198,243. This gives you an idea of how much money is flowing through these machines. Net gaming revenue is defined in the report from the player’s perspective as the amount of money lost, and these are extraordinary sums.

In Adelaide’s Sunday Mail, a Shogun 2 machine in a northern suburbs hotel had generated a net gaming revenue for 2005-06 of $478, 913, which is a staggering amount. It is worth much, much more than my house, which is also in the northern suburbs. It is a figure that is all the more concerning when one compares it to the figures provided to me by the Statewide Gambling Therapy Service, which has a northern office in Salisbury. It is a treatment provider which basically treats gambling addictions as if they are anxiety disorders and teaches the addicts of machines to ignore the stimulus to gamble. Of a sample of its clients from 19 October 2007 to 31 January 2008, 87 per cent were found to have problems with gaming machines. The average, or mean, total reported loss per client was $83,000; the median was $30,000. These figures break down as follows: four per cent of people lost less than $10,000; 34 per cent lost between $10,000 and $20,000; 19 per cent had losses of $30,000; 14 per cent lost between $40,000 and $100,000; and 29 per cent had losses of $100,000 or more. You have on one hand the staggering net gaming revenue of these machines and on the other the staggering losses of those addicted to them.

I think that this is something that the House should be concerned about. This is not an issue that just affects South Australia; it affects many states. Western Australia stands alone as a bit of a beacon that has resisted the spread of these machines to the suburbs. Australia is unique in having these machines in the suburbs. The one flaw of this report by the Independent Gambling Authority is that the core technology, the reinforcement schedules, of these various electronic gaming machines could not be examined because they were not held by the Office of the Liquor and Gambling Commissioner in South Australia. The core technology—that is, the information on rate at which you win—was not held by the regulator. It seems incredible to me that the state regulator did not have this information, but nevertheless the report is compelling reading and I would commend it to members of the House.

Question agreed to.