it’s time for labor to break up with the pokies
Labor's love affair with pokies: a timeline
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Labor's love affair with pokies: a timeline ~
in 1956…
Labor Premier John Joseph “JJ” Cahill legalised poker machines, exclusively to clubs, with Leagues Clubs having arisen as a more working class social club.
Through the 60s and 70s, big clubs like St Georges League (the ‘Taj Mahal’) opened in 1963) and South Sydney Juniors Leagues Club emerged.
in 1997…
Bob Carr’s government, elected in 1995, legalised poker machines in hotels and oversaw massive growth in electronic gaming machine (EGM) numbers, publicly justified as a way of reviving pubs but also encouraged as a form of revenue raising.
This was on the back of a tighter relationship between the Labor Party and the Australian Hotels Association (AHA) whose CEO and President frequently visited parliament and provided donations and alcohol for functions and events.
Pokies losses spiked from $864 per head in 1996-7 to $1,256 in 1999-2000 around the time (late 80s-early 90s) older lever pulling machines were replaced with more addictive, partially and fully automatic machines.
"It's almost as if our community has done a bargain with the devil.”
— Former Labor Premier Bob Carr, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 July 2018
in 2010…
Labor Premier Kristina Keneally’s government introduces a tax free threshold on pub poker machine profits up to $200,000 (approx 65% of pubs), with those earning higher profits paying more to offset. It seemed the deal was brokered by John Whelan, a former advisor to the Labor gaming minister Grant McBride, who had gone to work for the AHA in 2008.
Michael Photios, a Liberal MP became a key lobbyist for AHA and is now a major lobbyist and founder of lobbying firm PremierNational.
The 2010-11 financial year was the height of political donations from CLubsNSW and the Australian Hotels Association due to political pressure associated with federal efforts to curb gambling from then Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
in 2011…
The Barry O’Farrell government, after signing an MoU with ClubsNSW before the 2011 election, introduced legislation to reduce top gaming machine tax rates. In his speech to the bill, Hospitality & Racing Minister George Souris said the tax changes would benefit registered clubs by approximately $300 million over four years. $200 million being from the tax changes and $90 million from changes to the ClubGRANTS tax rebate.
Labor resoundingly supported the bill, while perhaps a little ironically in hindsight, noted that it reduced $300 million in revenue at a time when the Coalition was claiming they had to cut back in spending.
2021-2022
The Bergin Inquiry into Crown Casino, followed by the National Crime Commission’s Inquiry into Money Laundering in Pubs and Clubs saw Liberal Gaming Minister Victor Dominello propose a cashless card in 2021. ClubsNSW, under CEO Josh Landis, a former staffer and political advisor in the NSW Labor Right, responded with a vicious campaign against Dominello.
Dominello’s proposal led to internal division, spearheaded by Transport Minister David Elliott, formerly the deputy head of the AHA. Premier Dominic Perrottet, fearful of the backlash coming into the election demoted Dominello. The AFR ran the headline “Did the pokie industry just demote the NSW gaming minister?
in 2023…
Despite Dominic Perrottet supporting the recommendation of the NSW Crime Commission to introduce a mandatory cashless gambling card, Opposition Leader Chris Minns refused to do the same.
This was despite Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey saying “We have a rare chance at bipartisanship which will overwhelm the club lobby’s deceitful tactics of threatening jobs and communities to kill reform.”
If some within Labor were hoping that the party would finally grow a backbone and stand up to the pubs and clubs industries under Chris Minns there was no chance of that.
but what about the labor conference motion?
Don’t believe the hype. Labor’s conference generated headlines, but most of it is recycled announcements, existing measures or measures that the government should be doing because it’s already the law (ie banning incentives to gamble). They’re also relying upon most people not understanding the difference between a gaming machine ‘entitlement’ and an actual machine.
Here’s the truth behind the claims…
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This is not a new policy. The Minns Labor Government made a big show of slashing the amount of Gaming Machine Entitlements (GMEs) in 2024. These are basically licences to get pokies, not the actual pokies themselves. They have still left a healthy amount of unassigned licences as a buffer, so since 2024 pubs and clubs have been accumulating more and more machines. NSW currently has 8000 unused GMEs, so a moratorium on them means that there is still room for a near 10% increase on pokies in NSW. This is not the groundbreaking crackdown it’s been painted as.
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So this is Labor’s big plan to halve the amount of pokies, but it comes with one huge condition. GME holders are only required to forfeit, or give up, a licence for a machine when they are moving it between venues. So, previously when venues moved pokies around, they’d have to lose one for every three machines moved. Now, they need to lose one for every two machines moved. Sounds like a good start, right? Well they also promised this back in 2023 and haven’t actually done it!. Bottom line is GME holders can hold onto their pokies for as long as they want as long as they don’t move them around.
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For too long clubs have been receiving special treatment from the government in terms of lower taxes and subsidies on the basis that they were non-profit. However clubs have amassed enormous wealth, building hotels, wellness centres, high end restaurants while still managing to bank millions in ‘profit’ each year. Currently, the highest tax rate on poker machine revenue (ie losses) for clubs is 28.4%. For hotels it’s 50% on pokies revenue over $5 million. We think this should be the bare minimum tax paid by clubs on their obscene pokies profits.
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This is pretty much the same scheme as the proposed changes to trading GMEs between venues.The key phrase here is traded machines. Unless those machines are moving between venues, there is no requirement for licencees to let them go.
This is just another example of Labor talking themselves up to do literally nothing. In a pre-election promise, the Treasurer boasted that he was going to remove 9,500 machines across 5 years. In reality, NSW now has almost 1000 more machines than when they entered office.
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We are yet to hear anything on this one, even though it was another one of Labor’s shiny election promises in 2023. They’ve been working on it since that time, with rumours that it’s not going to be implemented until well after the next election. Tenders were called for in late 2024/early 2025, although it was a closed process.
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Broken record alert - facial recognition technology (FRT) in all pubs and clubs is another election promise. It’s supposed to go hand-in-hand with the statewide exclusion scheme but they’ve both been kicked into the long grass. We do hear that ClubsNSW has been kicking up a stink about too many onerous privacy requirements so the government has released a Voluntary Code of Practice for pubs and clubs with FRT. And begged them to be good and abide by it, but if they don’t whatevs., The Minns Government is continuing its whole secret government thing by refusing to make public the Privacy and Information Commissioner’s take on it. So it’s not that far-fetched to have suspicions.
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“Account-based play” is the term the Independent Panel on Gaming Reform came up with to avoid using the term ‘cashless gaming card’ because the Minns Government was just over it. Thing is, unless any cashless/account-based system is mandatory it’s pointless and, yep, Labor’s policy isn’t mandatory. Meaning it’s potentially nothing more than a ‘swipe and play’ digital card.
There is also nothing to stipulate that “control their play” means to set precommitted loss and/or time limits, or that these should be mandatory for everyone.There is damning evidence from Victoria that shows initiatives like these – with voluntary commitment – are useless.
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And again, another old idea reframed as a new one. VIP programs should have already been discontinued under the Gaming Machine Act 2001, which outlines that venues must not incentivise gambling with free or discounted alcohol, free credits or coupons, or other initiatives. How is enforcing that going, Labor?
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