Hats off to the poker machine lobby for getting the New South Wales Labor Party to dumbly swallow a twisted interpretation of a deficient study on cashless gaming.
No surprise, of course, given the influence ClubsNSW and the Australian Hotels Association have long demonstrated over the “criminal state”.
And as for the Premier’s alleged quick declaration of independence from the pokies lobby, well we can hope, but I’ll come back to that.
First: it could be purely coincidental that, facing pressure to declare whether Labor works for ClubsNSW or not, Opposition Leader Chris Minns happened to know all about a little two-year-old Victorian Responsible Gaming Foundation report on cashless gaming.
Or it might not be coincidental – an interpretation of the report could have been fed to him by the parties most interested in keeping billions of dollars in dirty cash flowing through electronic gaming machines each year in clubs and hotels.
Certainly Mr Minns’ interpretation, as reported, is what ClubsNSW would be spinning. And it is false.
‘Don’t have the resources’
But the first reason Mr Minns gave for ducking the issue was simply risible anyway: “The reason for that is you have got an industry that says they don’t have the resources to roll out the technology immediately to within a truncated timeframe.”
Nearly $100 billion a year through said industry’s machines a year for massive profits and the poor babies haven’t “the resources” to say no to the billions that are the proceeds of crime.
Cry me a river. Heaven spare the possibility that the seven-figure salaries of the mega-clubs’ CEOs might be trimmed a tad.
“The second thing is that you’ve got a report from the Victorian [Responsible] Gambling Foundation that indicates that it may induce demand when it comes to problem gambling as a result of there not being a sense of how much you are losing,” Mr Minns said.
The Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation report did not find that. I’ve read it – unlike Mr Minns, I’d wager.
Indeed, the actual report – as opposed to the pokie pushers’ interpretation of it – stressed that there was stuff-all research on the impact of cashless gaming and called for some to be done.
And the report was upfront about the fact that it was a little rushed job – officially, a “rapid review” – knocked out in a week or so to have a quick look at some aspects of cashless payments.
Note: cashless payments, not cashless gaming. You know, using credit cards to buy stuff.
And from there, the quickie review of cashless shopping made a few guesses about what going cashless might mean for pokies, all very “maybe”.
It reported that some researchers found shoppers may spend more if they’re using a card rather than cash – it was a bit harder to keep count with a card, people using cards had less “pain of payment” than those using cash.
The report theorised that this might apply to gamblers as well, but the authors recommended more research be done to find out.
What was indicated by the report is that cashless gaming combined with other harm reduction measures such as limited uploads to a mandatory gaming card could limit harm – but they were in no position to really know.
And the whole thing was just about the possibilities of problem gambling harm-minimisation, not about reducing pokies-driven crime or the other issues identified by the NSW Crime Commission.
While Mr Minns was using somebody’s selective interpretation of a “rapid review” to duck and weave, the biggest argument for cashless gaming to actually reduce gambling has been shouted from the rooftops by the real experts, ClubsNSW, which claimed its members would lose $1.8 billion if it was introduced.
The NSW Crime Commission had a similar view after an extensive investigation that was a very great deal more thorough than a quickie review of cashless shopping.
It is an extremely safe bet that if ClubsNSW doesn’t want cashless gaming, it is not because of the supposed welfare of problem gamblers.
Meanwhile, the National Party, as big a friend of clubs’n’pubs gambling as anyone, wasn’t even pretending – it had no comment.
Perrottet’s admirable conversion
Which is where Premier Perrottet’s admirable conversion to the side of the angels begins to look less certain.
Without the Nationals or Labor, whatever Mr Perrottet says doesn’t matter. And yet to be established is how solid the rest of the Liberal Party is on the issue.
(Remember that Victor Dominello was quickly replaced as the responsible minister when he proposed cashless gaming.)
Mr Perrottet also reportedly said he would work closely with pubs and clubs on the issue.
That way plenty of sandbagging lies.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope Mr Perrottet and the Liberal Party are rock solid in fighting and defeating the gambling industry’s hold over NSW politics.
I also hope Labor and the National Party will suddenly start caring more about people than their donors and join on a bipartisan basis with Mr Perrottet.
But I’m not betting on it.
