Doorstop, Melbourne, Gambling Reform

Transcript— 5:10 pm, Tuesday, 24 January 2012 — Melbourne

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E&OE

Kevin Andrews

Ladies and gentlemen, can I say a few words about gambling today.

When Julia Gillard ripped up the agreement with Andrew Wilkie, she told us that the reason she was doing it was that she couldn’t secure the passage of the legislation through the Parliament, in particular through the House of Representatives, and yet it emerged in the last 24 hours that Julia Gillard did not approach Tony Crook and did not approach Bob Katter in relation to their voting on this matter.

So, what we have revealed today is a deception upon a deception, the first deception being of Andrew Wilkie and ripping up his agreement, but then to come out and to say “the reason I was doing this was because I couldn’t secure the numbers”. Not having approached and lobbied Tony Crook and Bob Katter is a further deception, and this particularly goes to the character of the Prime Minister.

There is now a pattern of behaviour  from this Prime Minister in terms of being prepared to change or do one thing in order to satisfy an immediate objective, such as there’ll be no carbon tax, and then turning around when it suits her to change that, and then to deceive us about why she’s doing it. This is just appalling behaviour on the part of the Prime Minister.

Secondly, can I say something about the proposal the government has in relation to the trial. This all arose because it was a base political consideration on the part of the Prime Minister to sign a deal with Andrew Wilkie. There has been no deep policy consideration of whether things like mandatory pre-commitment would work, and yet now we’ve got the government coming out and saying that it is a range of things that we propose. When you look at them, things like improving education and counselling, or things like providing some restrictions on online bookmaking and the like, these are things which have been taken directly from the Opposition’s policy document. And not only did the government do no policy work in the first place, they’ve done very little policy work now. We are happy if they’re prepared to implement what we consider to be good policy, but it shows once again how incompetent and out of touch the Labour government really is.

Question

So are you upset that this deal hasn’t fallen over yet?

Kevin Andrews

Look, I’m not upset about these arrangements. What I’m upset about is that there was a deception of Andrew Wilkie in the first place, and now we’re being told the reason is “I can’t procure the numbers in the House”, and yet two of the Independent members of the House haven’t been approached for their vote.

So, that’s basically a deception of the Australian people, and as I said, coming on top of ripping up the agreement this is very poor form from the Prime Minister.

Question

Is it a deception or is it a test (inaudible)?

Kevin Andrews

Well, if you want to know the likely chance of success you go and ask people how they’re going to vote. On a whole range of other issues Julia Gillard and Jenny Macklin and this government have gone after Independents to woo them to get their vote, and yet we learn from this Mr Crook that the last time there was any mention whatsoever of gambling and poker machines was five months ago, and Bob Katter, who’s a pretty straight shooter, comes out and says he hasn’t been approached at all. So, there was no real assessment done in terms of what Julia Gillard is now saying.

Question

Doesn’t change the fact though that ultimately this could fall apart (inaudible)?

Kevin Andrews

Well, our position has been quite clear, we’ve been through a long policy process which we’re still going through, and we ask ourselves two questions in relation to these issues. “Will any proposal work?”, and secondly “What are the consequences?”, including any possible unintended consequences of the proposal when put into place. When we ask the question about mandatory pre-commitment, on the available evidence, we’ve come to the conclusion that it won’t work, and that’s for a number of reasons.

The first is that the person concerned can set their own limit, so a person can bet a limit of $20,000 or $50,000 even if they don’t have that sort of money available. Worse than that, if they’ve reached their limit and are excluded for a day or so, they can then set another limit.

So, somebody who’s got an addiction to gambling is likely to come back, set another limit and go higher. So, the reality is that mandatory pre-commitment simply won’t work and that’s why we’ve said that we won’t support that policy.

Question

Do you accept though that something does need to be done to curb poker machines and their effects on problem gamblers?

Kevin Andrews

Yes, something does need to be done for problem gamblers and we’ve said that all along, and we’ve said—let’s put this in context in the first place. Most people who gamble in Australia do so in a responsible manner. Now lots of people go to a pub or club on a Friday or Saturday night and put a few dollars through the pokies, they’re not harming anybody; they’re not harming themselves, their family, or their children. But there are a small group of problem gamblers. What we said is that we should be addressing these addictions like we address any other social addictions in society. We do that by providing better education, we do it by providing counselling for the people, and that’s what we tend to do

Question

But those things already exist.

Kevin Andrews

Well they don’t exist efficiently, and the government has pleaded that today, not in so many words, but by saying that they’re going to put more money into these sort of services as part of the proposed trial in the ACT; it’s evidence that the government itself believes that these services are not adequate at the present time.

Question

Is there though, any specific Coalition policy which you’re prepared to put forward as an alternative trial to which the government has now proposed?

Kevin Andrews

Well, we’re going to wait and see what happens in relation to the trial. As I understand it this is an offer that has been made by clubs in the ACT who have written or communicated with their members to the question of whether it is necessary or not to have the clubs and the gambling venues in Queanbeyan involved in this process, whether that will simply mean a migration of gamblers from Canberra to nearby Queanbeyan.

So, there are obvious questions that are still outstanding at the present time as to whether or not this trial is even going to proceed. What we’re doing and have been doing is firstly consulting with everybody involved. We’ve been doing that for the best part of twelve months.

Secondly, we’ve put a discussion paper out and we’re meeting in the next week or so with many of the interested parties, both those who are involved in providing gambling to citizens and those who have a concern about the problem, and as a result of that we will then form policy and we will take it to our process and come up with good policies. But as I said, it is interesting that the government has simply not done that work and has pinched most of our proposals which they are putting into this trial. We’re on target to produce a report to the leader of the Opposition by the end of February, we’re working towards that, whether or not this trial and whether it gets off the ground has any effect on the timing we’ll just have to see, but at the moment we’re working on that timetable.

Question

What’s the reason the Opposition wouldn’t support the Government from the first?

Kevin Andrews

In relation to—

Question

—in relation to mandatory pre-commitment?

Kevin Andrews

Oh, well, the reasons are outlined, and that’s simply that mandatory pre-commitment, on the evidence, won’t work. It involves the gambler setting his or her own limits and with the ability to go back and reset that limit day after day after day. So, this is not a measure which will solve problem gambling, and we’ve also said that there’s no silver bullet which can solve problem gambling. When we look into addictions in the community, whether they’re alcohol addictions or drug addictions or in this case gambling addiction, often psychologists will tell us that that’s what they’re doing is a manifestation of a deeper social or personal issue that that person has, and so just simply thinking that there’s one simple solution that’s going to solve these problems I think is quite naive.

Question

Well, it’s not really fair though to say it’s up to the gambler to set a limit as high as they want. The proposal never included that ability.

Kevin Andrews

Well, the reality is that in the end that’s what they can do. Gamblers would be able to set limits and they’d be able to reset limits. So that’s not going to stop people gambling. The other issue which I didn’t mention before is that we’ve got a migration of gambling from poker machines and those sort of gambling venues increasingly to online gambling. So there is very little control by way of what can happen at a venue; a person is sitting in their own lounge room or dining room, using a computer and engaging in online gambling and that’s where the great growth is occurring not just in Australia but right around the world from all the evidence, and that’s something which also has to be addressed. But this simple system of using one measure to deal with poker machines and problem gamblers with poker machines is simply unreal in addressing the total situation that they’re facing.

Question

Why not support dollar bet limits then?

Kevin Andrews

Well dollar bet limits have got some problems as well. Again we ask the question “Will work it work?” and “What are the consequences?”, and we’re hearing some people about this over the next few weeks as part of our inquiry but at the moment the evidence seems to be that people will simply spend more time betting the same amount of money because they have to do it in smaller quantities each time they bet. Now if the person therefore neglects their family or work or other responsibilities because they’re sitting for more time in front of the poker machines, then that’s not the solution, and again I think this underlines the point that we’ve been making all through this; and that is there isn’t a single solution, we need a range of solutions to deal with this problem, and we’ve got to recognise that these problems are manifestations of other problems that people have in their lives.

Thank you very much.

[ends]