Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

This Bill gives an opportunity for the Federal Government to draw a line in the sand in relation to the damage caused by poker machines to literally hundreds of thousands of Australians.

I decided to run for the upper house in South Australia on a ‘No Pokies’ ticket in 1997.

The tipping point for me came when a client of mine in my suburban legal practice who had an acquired brain injury, and who had received an emergency $30,000 superannuation payment, came to my office in tears.

I asked him what was wrong and he said to me that his friends didn’t want to be his friends any more.

When I pressed him for details it turned out his so-called friends were the staff at his local pokies pub.  In the previous weeks they had been picking my client, who has an obvious impairment, up from his modest unit and driving him to their venue so he could gamble on poker machines.

They’d give him free drinks, credit and when he was too drunk to keep gambling they would push the buttons for him.

But as soon my client’s money was gone, so were they.

It was this parasitic callousness that drove me to take a stand.

Of course if you listened to the industry at the time, you would have thought these machines were harmless entertainment.

This is a quote from John Bowley, then Marketing Development Manager of Aristocrat Leisure Industries in 1992.

John said with a straight face:  “Playing Pokies is entertainment, not gambling.  It would take you a month of Sundays to lose $100 on one of these things.”

Well clearly time flies in John’s world because as the Productivity Commission revealed in its Draft Report into Gambling last week, it doesn’t take a month of Sundays to lose $100 on a poker machine.

In fact with $20 bets and given the current spin rate of machines, the Commission concluded it was relatively easy to lose $1,200 an hour playing these machines.

It’s always best to have a fence at the top of a cliff than the world’s best equipped ambulance at the bottom.

Preventing harm is always better than treating it, which is why the Productivity Commission draft report into Gambling represents such a breakthrough in thinking.

For more than a decade, state governments and the poker machine industry have pointed to programs that supposedly help problem gamblers after they develop a gambling problem – the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach.

But the Productivity Commission rightly points out the ineffectiveness of this approach. 

The Commission in effect argues that poker machines are a dangerous product and they need to be regulated and made safer.

This Bill would limit the maximum bet on any spin to one dollar and will adjust spin rates and volatility to ensure problem gamblers cannot lose more than $120 an hour.

This reflects the recommendations in the Productivity Commission’s draft report.

I stress these are only interim measures.  The Productivity Commission will have a final report available early next year and I would anticipate the Federal Government would use that as the basis for a widespread overhaul of poker machine regulation in this country, which would ideally include a compulsory pre-commitment scheme.

But these measure are something the Government can do right now.

And based on the Productivity Commission’s figures, every day the Federal Government fails to do this, six million, four hundred thousand dollars of state revenue will be lost solely by problem gamblers.

That figure does not include the daily revenue from recreational gamblers.

The six million, four hundred thousand dollars that the states rake in every day is just from problem gamblers – people with an addiction.

That almost six and a half million dollars represents food that can’t be afforded by the wives or husbands of problem gamblers, it’s school shoes that aren’t on the feet of the children of problem gamblers, and too often it’s money stolen from small and big businesses around the country by people desperately trying to feed an addiction.

The industry will claim it will cost too much to impose these relatively modest limits. 

But the truth is, that argument is disingenuous.

In fact a recent British study into poker machines revealed these measures could not just be conducted quickly, but they could also be done, cheaply and centrally.

It’s a little known fact that all poker machines in many Australian jurisdictions must be connected to an Electronic Monitoring centralised computer system which monitors the network and allows for remote adjustment of amongst other things adjustment of bank note acceptors.

So don’t believe any stories about retro-fitting and multimillion dollars costs to gambling companies. 

A lot of this can be done with a few strokes on a keyboard.

In the past, when the poker machine industry has sought to argue against any changes, they have claimed that any restriction is an affront to freedom, and that players are exercising free will.

It’s an absurd position.  Addicts aren’t exercising free will.

They are feeding an addiction created by the very presence of poker machines in our community.

Almost half of all profits come from problem gamblers. 

This is an industry without a sustainable business case.

It’s unsustainable unless it is allowed to exploit the addicted.

That said, I think we are seeing a shift in thinking. 

People are starting to realise just how damaging this industry is. 

Even before the last election the Prime Minister as Opposition Leader said he hated poker machines and he knew something of the harm they caused to families.

In fact it was those comments from the Prime Minister that prompted me to consider running for Federal Politics.

I found Kevin Rudd’s words inspirational and now I want to be inspired by his actions.

I would call on the Prime Minister, and the Government and the Opposition and the cross-benchers to act now and support these modest interim measures.

Twelve years ago when I ran for state politics on an anti-poker machine platform I was openly mocked by a number of politicians from the major parties.

They thought I was crazy.

A decade on I draw encouragement from the fact that the Productivity Commission seems to be saying that we are all crazy unless we act immediately to curb the destruction caused by these machines of misery.

The time to act is now. The cost of not implementing these measures won’t just be counted in dollars.  It will be counted in shattered lives.  I would urge all of my colleagues to support this Bill.