Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is estimated that there are around 300,000 Australians who are problem gamblers and a further 2.3 million people who are directly affected by problem gambling. It is a very serious problem and it has a devastating effect on marriages, on families, on friendships, on children and on the whole community.

I was fascinated with Mr Rudd’s pledge to reduce state government reliance on pokies revenue. But what was missing in what he said was what he was going to do about it. He has admitted today that he did not see any revenue substitute for poker machines in public sector and clubs. Just saying you hate poker machines is not enough, Mr Rudd. States and territories are accountable for the delivery of services to address the adverse effects of gambling, and there is no doubt they need to do a lot more. They receive more than $4.7 billion in gambling revenue every single year, yet they choose to spend less than five per cent on this problem—some states spend even less than five per cent—on gambling services, on education, on research and on community benefits. They themselves have become addicted to gambling revenue.

Given Mr Rudd’s hatred of poker machines, I checked Hansard to see what he has said over the time he has been in the House of Representatives. Do you know what? He has said absolutely nothing about poker machines in the whole time that he has been here.

We saw Mr Mark Latham pushing the populist buttons before the last election. I do not know how many leaders they have had since then. Mr Rudd was talking on Saturday about new leadership: we have got new leadership all the time in the Labor Party. When Mr Latham was leader, he said he was going to push the gambling button too. He was caught out, because what the public wanted was substance, not just the pushing of populist buttons.

Mr Rudd’s railing against poker machines is nothing more than that. He has got no record on the issue. He has never spoken on it. If he had, his new-found interest might not sound quite so hollow. Where is the substance? What does he propose to do? How will he reduce the reliance of wall-to-wall Labor governments on revenue from poker machines?

It was the Labor Premier Mrs Kirner who introduced poker machines into Victoria. Now a Labor Premier in New South Wales is expanding keno in clubs in New South Wales. So it is always a case of: do not look at what Labor says; look at what Labor does. He cannot divorce himself from the Labor premiers and from the Labor governments in the states. Mr Rudd cannot do that.

In 1998 the Treasurer directed the Productivity Commission to report on the performance of the gambling industry and its economic and social impact across Australia. I do not have time to go into the details, but the report provided a picture of the effects of problem gambling and provided measures which could be considered to address the issue. Most, if not all, of those issues were issues that should have been addressed by the states.

In December 1999 the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced the Australian government’s support for a national approach to problem gambling and that involved the establishment of a council of Australian ministers responsible in the community services area to focus on: stopping the further expansion of gambling in Australia, the impact of problem gambling on families and communities, and internet gambling and consumer protection. Let me tell you my experience with convening that council. When I was the health minister the state Labor ministers were all gung-ho about calling meetings on health, but I do not think I ever had one minister responsible for gambling ask me to convene a meeting of this council. It was on my instigation that we convened the meetings, and they were very reluctant to come. So the Labor ministers were not rushing to participate and there was strong resistance to my call for states to report clearly their income from gambling and their expenditure on addressing the resulting problems.

I spent time meeting with the ATM industry, the gambling industry, the banking industry and people working with people with gambling problems and was convinced—and still am convinced—that what we needed was evidence based research to understand how to deal with the very small group of problem gamblers, many of whom are the least able to afford to gamble and yet are the highest contributors to gambling revenue. So here we have a small number of people—one to two per cent, it is estimated—contributing most of the revenue, and many of those people cannot afford to gamble.

Mr Tim Costello of World Vision came out in support of Mr Rudd’s statement and Mr Rudd said he would be enlisting him for one of his innumerable committees. There are not enough people in Australia to participate on all of Mr Rudd’s committees. They might have to even ask me in my retirement, given there are so many committees. I have great respect for Mr Tim Costello, but when I heard him say that ATMs should be shifted out of poker machine venues I wanted to sound of word of caution. We do not know whether that will stop problem gamblers. Behaviour which is rewarded with random reinforcement is the hardest to extinguish—any psychologist will tell you that. Poker machines are a process of random reinforcement. How do we know that people will not go to the relocated ATM and take out a larger amount of money? We do not, and they might be liable to gamble more. We do not know whether they will go 400 metres down the road and take out more money. We do not know whether more people will be mugged on their way back to the gambling venue.

Sadly, when I was minister I could not convince the ministerial council to set up an independent national gambling research institute. We have some very good researchers in this area in Australia and New Zealand. I put $3 million on the table. I had talked to the banking, gambling and ATM industries and they indicated to me that they would come to the party in support of an interdependent research institute, where the research was guided by an independent committee so that it could not be biased one way or the other towards the gambling industry or the states. I called on the states to combine and match the Commonwealth funding, so we would have had $10 million or more for a gambling research institute. I had hoped that we would get some sound evidence that would provide policy directions for the states to pursue to tackle the issue of problem gambling—not hot-headed, poll-driven, button-pushing announcements but real changes based on peer reviewed research that would, hopefully, have helped those whose lives are devastated by their addiction to gambling.

I have to say that I most probably dislike poker machines as much as Mr Rudd, but at least I have a record in trying to do something about them. My hopes were dashed when the state ministers refused to match this funding and dressed up an existing failed program, through a process of smoke and mirrors, to cover their reluctance to spend their gambling revenue on this very significant problem.

When various groups concerned about gambling made calls to shift ATMs the states constantly tried to shift the responsibility to gaming venues. I constantly got calls from the media asking: ‘What are you going to do about it? Why don’t you legislate the location of ATMs?’ The states and territories have the power to act in this area. The Australian Government Solicitor provided me with advice that the states and territories have the ability to regulate access to ATMs, place limits on withdrawals—and some states do do that—as well as impose sanctions on providers who do not meet their regulations. But the Labor states shirked their responsibility. They would not support a national gambling research institute and they tried to pass the buck about who was responsible for the placement of ATMs. Sadly, I have no confidence that the states will tackle the very serious problems arising from problem gambling.

If Mr Rudd were fair dinkum and if he had the gumption, he would be saying, ‘Do what I do, not what I say.’ What should he do? He should take a lead from the team that I barracked for as a kid growing up in the inner city of Sydney—the Rabbitohs. Today they announced that they have turned their back on poker machines. Mr Rudd could insist that the Labor Clubs in Canberra—and there are four of them delivering campaign funds to Labor—eliminate poker machines from the clubs, or at least he could reject campaign funding from them. Then the public might believe what he is saying. These clubs are Labor Clubs, and he could have some influence, surely. He could put his money where his mouth is. Actions speak louder than words.

While he is at it, maybe he could ask Labor luminaries like Barrie Unsworth, Keith DeLacy, John Ducker, Joe Meissner, Richard Face, Neville Wran—all of whom have been involved at a senior level in the gambling industry in some way—or David White, who has lobbied for the industry, to back his calls on the recalcitrant Labor state governments. Sadly, I think Mr Rudd will be standing there alone. He will not be backed by those people.

If Mr Rudd had spoken about gambling in the other house, if he had supported me when I was calling on the states to join in funding a high-level research institute on problem gambling and if he were to refuse funding from Labor Clubs in Canberra and call on them to reduce or eliminate poker machines, then maybe families devastated by problem gambling and the public would be inclined to listen to what he is saying. It is no good pressing the buttons, like Mr Latham tried to. You need to see some sort of action. I would have liked to have seen from those Labor ministers some commitment to evidence based research—not feel-good policies about turning off the lights or putting clocks on every machine, which just adds cost to the industry.

Some people enjoy gambling. I am not denying that there are a lot of people who enjoy going to a club to put some money in the poker machines as a social activity and then leave. They are not addicted to it. I am not condemning that. But simplistic so-called solutions—simple solutions which are not solutions at all—that make you feel good about an impost on the industry and that do not have one bit of evidence to support them and not one chance of changing those people’s behaviour are, in fact, a lie. It makes some politicians feel good that they are going to do something about problem gambling because they are turning off the lights, shutting machines down, banning smoking in gambling places or insisting that you have a clock on the machine. All sorts of suggestions have been made and the industry has been required to implement some of them. That is not going to change the behaviour of these people whose families wait for them to come home when they have put most, if not all, of their welfare cheque—or even borrowed or stolen money—into a poker machine. Just saying that you do not like them or that you hate them is not going to change it.

If he is ever going to be Prime Minister, Mr Rudd needs to learn that you have to back up what you say you are going to do with gumption and make hard decisions. Just saying that you are worried about it does not have any effect. I issued press releases about this measure. He did not come to me and say: ‘I will come and support you. I will talk to my mates in the Labor Party. I will talk to the people in Queensland.’ He has a lot of mates up there. He admitted that he was involved in the Queensland government at an official level when they introduced poker machines, though I do not blame him for that. He might have had some connections to help me fund this national research institute, but he was nowhere to be seen. He cannot come as a Kevin-come-lately and say that he is interested in reducing reliance on poker machines. I want to see what he has done; I want to see what he will do. He should actually back up his words with actions.