Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the conduct of the Crown Resorts casinos and the urgent need for the establishment of a national gambling regulator. The New South Wales inquiry report by Patricia Bergin has clearly and with no ambiguity expressed the view that Crown is not suitable to hold the gambling licence at Barangaroo. The Crown Resorts inquiry found that Crown's Melbourne and Perth casinos had clear evidence of money laundering and dodgy dealings with overseas junket operators that were likely to be linked with organised crime networks. My question is: how can the public trust state governments and state regulators to effectively control an industry that raises millions in revenue for state coffers and where, at the same time, there are obviously very dodgy things happening with money laundering and the connections with the junket operators? How can they expect that they are going to get proper regulation when there is an inherent conflict of interest?

State governments don't necessarily want to bite the hand that feeds them and, therefore, to take the tough action that is required to hold the likes of Crown to account. Not only do they rely on the revenue from gambling but since 2012-13 more than half of all the money donated by Crown to political parties in Australia has come to parties in Western Australia. During this time, Crown donated nearly $800,000 to both the Labor and Liberal parties in WA. So the obvious question that everybody asks is: what sort of influence does that money buy? The conflicts of interests are rife within the gambling industry, and it is way past time something was done about this. This week the WA gambling regulator recommended that the McGowan government establish an independent inquiry into Crown's suitability to hold a casino licence in Western Australia. This is a welcome step forward. But we all know that these types of inquiries only work where there is a political will to act on the findings. So what we also need to ensure is that the government, whichever party happens to be in government at the time the inquiry reports, actually commits to implementing the recommendations and findings from that inquiry.

We've all known for a long time about the public health impacts of gambling related harms. This is an industry that creates trauma, pain and economic hardship. Governments have a responsibility to implement effective harm minimisation measures to reduce problem gambling. But how can this happen when the gambling industry buys political influence and is not adequately regulated by state authorities that have come to rely on the revenue that they get from the gambling industry, so write-off people that are gambling, that have gambling addictions and then suffer the consequences of the trauma and pain that that causes? We need to be addressing this issue. We need to have a system that is not influenced by millionaire and billionaire donors and gambling interests. Any system needs to guarantee that it's not influenced by the revenue that is generated by gambling or political donations. The corruption that has been exposed within the Crown Resorts process in Melbourne and Perth also highlights the urgent need for the establishment of a national independent regulator.

State governments cannot be regulating a process where they are gaining millions and millions of dollars from revenue and they're also gaining political donations. We urgently need to have a national regulator and we urgently need a national public health approach to gambling. We need that approach to gambling regulation, for harm prevention and minimisation. This industry needs to be properly regulated. It needs a national regulator—one that is independent and one that does not receive revenue from the industry it's supposed to regulate.