Legislative council committee needed to delve into pokies Bill

Fabiano Cangelosi says the government’s gaming industry reform Bill is omnibus legislation that requires forensic scrutiny

THE opinion piece by the Member for Clark Kristie Johnston (Talking Point, September 29) was naked political opportunism trying to wedge the Parliamentary Labor Party into supporting her harm minimisation amendments to the government’s Gaming Bill.

The best course for Tasmania is not for the Bill to be passed in whole, with harm minimisation amendments.

The best course is for the Bill to be subject of a Legislative Council Committee process, which can carefully examine all its provisions, and not just harm minimisation amendments.

The rationale for doing so is the Gaming Bill is arguably a form of omnibus legislation. It deals with a wide range of legislative subjects.

It is a complete reworking of the gambling industry in Tasmania, from regulation and licensing, to taxation, and the creation of new gaming products. The only uniting thread in the Bill is these things are, in some way, related to gaming.

Importantly, it contains the worst aspect of omnibus legislation: the capacity to distract attention of politicians from the combined effect of multiple disparate pieces of legislative reform.

That it is having this effect is apparent in debate about the Bill. Due to understandable concern about poker machines in the community, and because the Bill contains no harm minimisation measures, the effect in progressive quarters has been to focus on how best to implement harm minimisation measures, with comparatively little focus on the new industry/regulatory environment in which those measures will exist.

Any harm minimisation measures that would come into force as a result of Ms Johnston’s wedge tactic would come into force with the rest of the Bill — everything from sweeping changes to licensing regimes to casino layout.

Ms Johnston knows the rest of the Bill is problematic. So why “lay down the gauntlet” for the PLP in the form of harm minimisation amendments, and ignoring wider problems with the Bill?

Harm minimisation does not occur in a vacuum.

Everything that we presently know about how harm minimisation is likely to work relates to the current

gaming market, whose most significant feature is its competition-free monopoly, and not the future gaming market.

Will the harm minimisation measures being contemplated by some in parliament, such as Ms Johnston, be effective in a gaming market with multiple licence holders, who are in competition for the statesanctioned blood money?

How effective will harm minimisation be when pokies licensees are squabbling to shovel yet more into their greedy blood-funnels?

It is plain there is grave concern among rank-and-file Labor members about the Gaming Control Bill: I am one of those rank-and-file members.

The absence of harm minimisation in the current Bill is one of its gravely concerning features: but it is just one of many gravely concerning features.

It is the function of our parliament ultimately to pass the best law that it can, and with respect to the gaming market generally, it ought to do what evidence tells it is best. A hasty demand for passage of the Bill, in the form of the “throwing down of a gauntlet” with harm minimisation measures, is inimical to a just outcome. It is political opportunism at the expense to all of Tasmania of passage of a gaming omnibus.

The best outcome will only be achieved if a Legislative Council Committee can take its time with the Bill and to receive evidence about all of its provisions. That Committee can carefully and methodically settle on the strongest regulatory model, the best taxation and finance provisions, and the most protective harm minimisation measures that are adapted for the future industry that will be created.

And — perhaps most importantly — a critical piece of legislation will be kept away from a blatant opportunist bent on wedging the PLP for her own interests.

Fabiano Cangelosi is a Hobart barrister, a former president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, and was a Labor candidate at the 2021 state election.