The Greens want Labor to donate $6 million to an anti-gambling harm organisation and cut ties with the Labor Club to account for its "conflict of interest" in the ACT's poker machine regulation debate.
The minor party has, in light of legal issues, abandoned an attempt to use legislation to force Labor cut its links to the Labor Club if Labor did not support the introduction of a central monitoring system.
The Greens will instead move a non-legally binding motion in the Legislative Assembly this week calling for Labor to cut ties with the club and donate the amount the party says Labor historically received in donations from revenue linked to poker machines.
Even with Liberal support, the motion would not compel Labor to make a donation or cut ties with the Labor Club. But it will prompt another public debate highlighting the split between the two governing parties.
Andrew Braddock, the Greens member Yerrabi who will move the motion, said vested interests had prevented Labor from taking meaningful action to reduce gambling harm.
"It is impossible for the Labor Party to meaningfully consider gambling policies without thinking about the impact on their associated entities," Mr Braddock said in a statement.
"If they want to be taken seriously, then the Labor Party needs to sever its ties with poker machines, either through having the Canberra Labor Club divest itself of its 436 poker machines or by severing the ties between party and clubs."
The move follows the Greens' declaration on Friday its talks with Labor had broken down and the future of a central monitoring system was in the hands of the Liberals.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said while he believed there was still a path forward on poker machine harm minimisation, it was becoming more difficult to negotiate with the Greens.
"There's quite a lot of announcements from them at the moment that are just not practical or achievable, that they are making now on the eve of an election. That's what election campaigns are like," Mr Barr said.
Mr Braddock's motion will call on Labor to sever ties with the Labor Clubs, which operate 12 per cent of the ACT's poker machines, and donate $6.1 million to the Alliance for Gambling Reform.
"According to disclosures to Elections ACT [the 1973 Foundation, which helps fund ACT Labor] was established using capital transfers from the Canberra Labor club amounting to $3,600,000 in 2011-12 and $2,500,000 in 2013-14, totalling at least $6,100,000. The ACT Labor party have received over $4,400,000 in funding from this investment vehicle since 2011-12," the motion will say.
ClubsACT chief executive Craig Shannon said the community was being treated poorly by the Legislative Assembly in the lead up to the election.
"We have an undignified and purely self-promoting debate occurring in the Assembly that benefits nobody," Mr Shannon said.
In-principal support from the three parties in the Assembly for an independent inquiry into the club industry should address all the issues and would allow the next Assembly to take an evidence-based response, he said.
"It is appalling that Canberra political representatives treat the club industry and our members and the issue of gambling harm as political footballs for self-promotion purposes. It's a childish and counterproductive approach to public policy development," he said.
ClubsACT wants no further legislation affecting the clubs sector to be passed until an inquiry reports back in the next parliamentary term.
Mr Barr said Labor would support the bill before the Assembly in the final sitting week of the term to legislate a reduction of poker machine numbers to 3500 machines.
"But we think that's still too many machines and that that number should continue to reduce over time. The fewer poker machines that we have in the city, the more we can reduce harm. We also, though, need to have guard rails around the machines that are in operation over the longer term," he said last week.
Mr Barr again criticised the central monitoring system policy put forward by Gaming Minister and Greens leader Shane Rattenbury for being too expensive and easy to circumvent by going across the border to keep gambling in Queanbeyan.
"We'll try and find some consensus on harm minimisation measures, but the challenge with CMS is it's expensive. The operator is just another gaming industry behemoth. The NSW one is run by Tabcorp," he said.
Mr Rattenbury has previously said the system would cost less than 5 per cent of poker machine profits over the next 20 years.
"I understand people's potential reservation at spending some material amount of money on such a system. But my question in response is at what price are we not willing to address gambling harm in the territory?" Mr Rattenbury said in March.
"I think this is a price we need to be willing to pay for an industry that's pulling around $180 million a year in profit."
Mr Rattenbury said he considered loss limits to be the most important policy the government could introduce to reduce gambling harm, but indicated a central monitoring system would be required first to effectively introduce loss across Canberra's poker machine venues.
