All bets on Labor support
Government’s pokies reform laws look set for easy passage
LABOR has defended its decision to back the government’s controversial poker machine reform legislation.
The Opposition sided with the government in a series of votes on the floor of the House of Assembly during debate on the Gaming Control Amendment (Future Gaming Market) Bill on Thursday night.
It signals the Bill — which ends Federal Group’s pokies monopoly — is likely to have an easier passage through both houses of parliament.
The Labor Party took a strong anti-pokies policy to the 2018 election, but party spokesman Dean Winter said it was now focused on securing amendments to improve harm minimisation measures.
“Having these amendments to the legislation accepted means Labor has achieved something very few opposition parties have ever accomplished during majority governments in Tasmania,” Mr Winter said.
“If Labor had won the 2018 election, we would have implemented our policy to remove poker machines from pubs and clubs.
“We did not win that election and we have accepted that. But our core values haven’t changed — our policy has.”
Independent MP Kristie Johnston said Labor’s position was deplorable
“What we saw last night in parliament was nothing more than the Labor Party and the
Liberal Party doing the bidding of the pokie machine industry,” she said. “And disappointingly we saw the Labor Party capitulate and support the Liberal government in every step of the way.”
Ms Johnston said the legislation needed stronger measures to protect problem gamblers.
“Everyone in the community sector has been speaking as one for many years, to say that effective harm minimisation measures deal with the dangerous and addictive features of poker machines, they need to decrease the maximum bet from $5 to $1,” she said. “They need to increase the spin speed from three seconds to six seconds. They need to ban losses disguised as wins, and ban false near misses particularly.”
Greens Leader Cassy O’Connor said there was still hours of debate needed to scrutinise the legislation.
“There are three women in there who are fighting for the public interest, fighting for democracy and decency and that’s Kristie Johnston, Rosalie Woodruff and I,” Ms O’Connor said.
“We watched time and again the Liberal and Labor parties vote together to back in the gambling industry, their donors.”
She said the Greens had pushed for 70 amendments.
“We didn’t get any of our amendments up,’’ Ms O’Connor said. “We moved to get pokies out of pubs and clubs, we moved to have $1 bet limits introduced.’’