Legislative Council, Tuesday 24 March
Ms FORREST (Murchison) – Mr President. I rise to support the motion. I thank the honourable member for Nelson for bringing it forward. I note that this is a matter that people have very strong views about, and there’s many members of this House, and community broadly, who have had very serious impacts from gaming machines in their lives, and I just acknowledge that, and for anyone who may watch or read this later to be aware I’m very cognisant of that. I note that as a House of review, our key function is not to rubber stamp decisions already made by the executive, but to scrutinise them, to ask whether they are grounded in evidence, whether they serve the public interest, and whether the people most affected have been given proper consideration.
That’s what this motion effectively asks us to do. I note the member for Nelson has raised many of the points as listed out in the motion and the report referenced in the motion, and I just wish to touch on some briefly, but I won’t try to go over all the matters the member for Nelson has raised; but this is a matter that is of critical importance to so many in our community, regardless of their political views and allegiances. Going back to some of the member for Hobart’s comments about a certain election: I remember being at a public function, talking to a dyed in the wool, rusted-on, intergenerational Liberal voter who told me they were going to vote Labor for the first time in their lives, and their forebears would be rolling in their graves, having that person tell me that; such was the strong view this person had on this matter. Political allegiances aside, this is not a political matter in that regard. It’s a human matter.
On 23 January 2026, two things happened simultaneously: the Tasmanian government published a detailed, independently modelled report prepared by Deloitte Access Economics I understand it was commissioned from the Department of State Growth – that demonstrated the previously planned mandatory poker machine player card with loss limits would deliver substantial net economic and social benefits to Tasmania. On the same day, the government announced it would not be implementing that reform that’s a good, evidence based approach. Instead, it released a different, lesser package of measures. It seems the government didn’t expect this outcome from their own commissioned report – a bit of a shock, perhaps. If they did read it, they just ignored it. The motion notes both of these matters together and to put two specific questions to the government. Those questions are not aggressive, they’re not partisan, they’re basically accountability questions that any responsible parliament should ask when evidence points one way and policy goes another.
I will address the evidence – the government’s alternative measures. The alarming new figures of poker machine losses, now at a decade high, and what the two questions in this motion require the government to answer.
The motion notes a number that must sit at the centre of this debate: Tasmanians’ annual poker machine losses for 2024 25 totalled $193,908,165.
Ms Rattray – No cents.
Ms FORREST – A lot of cents. That’s almost $200 million. This is a decade high – the amount of money that’s been lost by predominantly Tasmanians on our poker machines.
Ms Webb – We’re on track for $200 million this financial year north of $200 million.
Ms FORREST – Let me say that again: this is not a decade low, or high. Not a plateau. It’s a decade high figure that we should, and must, take seriously. At the very moment the Tasmanian government was preparing to shelve the mandatory pre commitment card a measure its own Independent Regulator recommended to address gambling harm and a measure one of their own, the member for Bass and former treasurer and minister for Finance, Michael Ferguson, had championed I commend him for that Tasmanians were losing more money on poker machines than at any other point in the preceding 10 years. I think Mr Ferguson knew about that. I’m sure he did and it concerned him deeply too.
To put that figure into perspective, the Fifth Social and Economic Impact Study of Gambling in Tasmania, published in 2021, recorded electronic game machine expenditure of $174 million, itself a 15 per cent reduction from the fourth SEIS in 2017. Yet by 2024 25, losses had climbed back to $193.9 million – almost $200 million. That was significantly above the 2017 level. This is not a picture of a gambling market managing itself. This is a picture of a gambling market in which harm is growing and is in the context of which the government’s decision to defer and dilute reform must be assessed. I think it’s precisely why the members brought this motion before us today.
Clause (a) of the motion adequately summarises the findings of the Deloitte Access Economics report, and I will examine most of the findings in a little bit of detail. This report suggests the best available evidence on this question, and that’s what it represents in this report. Remember, it was commissioned by the government. The report was prepared by Deloitte Access Economics for the Department of State Growth and published in December 2025. It uses a computable general equilibrium modelling – the same regression methodology used to assess the economy wide impacts of major Commonwealth policy reforms. It’s a robust model. Three scenarios were assessed: significant substitution, central scenario, and maximum cashless effects.
The reform model was the mandatory account based cashless card system with mandatory loss limits and session breaks – the player card that the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission had been developing since this 2022 recommendation. In the central scenario, the reform adds approximately $230 million to Tasmania’s gross state product and creates over 200 net additional jobs. That’s pretty good.
Ms Webb – That’s substantial.
Ms FORREST – Pretty good, isn’t it, when you look at some of the other things we’ve modelled. In the most conservative scenario, maximum cashless effects, the reform still adds $153 million of GSP and 126 in additional jobs. That’s the conservative scenario. In the significant substitution scenario the benefit reaches $240 million and 238 jobs. Either way you look at it, even if you take the least optimistic view, it still has significant benefit in terms of adding money to the GSP and jobs for Tasmanians. Across all three scenarios the reform generates net economic activity and net additional employment.
This reform would redirect spending in the economy. Tasmanians who previously spent money on EGMs spend that money on other goods and services, so other people benefit as well, not just them. Workers previously suffering gambling related absenteeism return to higher productivity. Another gain. Government saves money on health, housing, justice and corrections services, with savings that flow back through the economy. I talked previously about savings that can be achieved if only willing to invest in the right places, here is another example. This modelling finds that all industries benefit from the reform with the sole exception of the EGM sector, which is not surprising, and the hospitality sector that hosts the EGMs. This is absolutely not unexpected but the benefits to this sector should not come at the expense of fellow Tasmanians who become addicted to the machines due to the very design features deliberately built into the machines.
I’ve heard the arguments about some of my little pubs around the place in my electorate that this is the only form of entertainment they tell me in the region. If we removed them from some of these areas – little pubs and clubs – you might find other things spring up and people might actually have more money to engage with other activities.
Critically, all regions, regardless of whether they are rural or urban, have a positive or neutral economic impact. No one would actually go backwards and that’s a really important thing to remember in those rural and regional communities to think if they lose their poker machines they’ll have nothing. All regions have a positive or neutral economic impact including the regions with a high concentration of EGMs, and we know where they are, they’re in my area. Some are in the member for Montgomery’s area and the member for Elwick’s area. These stand to gain more because they bear more of a current harm. This directly refutes the argument put by industry that reform will hurt regional communities which are some of the communities I represent, as I’ve said. The evidence says the opposite. We should rely on evidence. The communities with more EGMs have more to gain from meaningful reform. They have more to gain, not lose.
The reform is estimated to reduce EGM player gambling expenditure by between 23 and 46 per cent across the modelled scenarios. Harm minimisation features, particularly with mandatory loss limits, are the key factors. While the cashless element of the card can increase spending for some players in the absence of limits, while most all of that increase is offset by a player reaching their mandatory precommitment limits. This is a critical finding that should be read alongside the high decade losses figure. The argument sometimes made by industry that a cashless card simply makes it easier to lose more is not supported by this evidence. The mandatory card changes behaviour because they must set the limit before the session starts, before they get hooked, and when the player is not yet in the grip of the impulse to continue through the design features of the machines.
The greatest reductions in harm fall on moderate risk and problem gamblers, the cohort who generates the majority of EGM revenue precisely because they lose the most. Nationally, the Productivity Commission has estimated over 40 per cent of poker machine losers come from people with severe gambling disorders with a further 20 per cent from moderate risk gamblers. A reform that specifically targets those cohorts is targeting the right people.
The Deloitte modelling quantifies cost savings to government across a wide range of services: healthcare, mental health support, homelessness programs, police, courts and corrections. These are real ongoing costs currently borne government as a consequence of gambling-related harm. These are costs that rarely appear in any budget line labelled ‘Gambling Policy’ but that flow through Health budgets, Housing budgets, Justice budgets and community service budgets, all of which are under enormous pressure right now.
By making these costs visible and modelling their reduction, the report demonstrates something important; reform does not simply cost government revenue, it saves government money across multiple portfolios over time. That is why the net GSP outcome is positive. That is why an evidence-based government should have acted on this report.
Clause (b) of the motion accurately itemises the government’s announced alternative package. I will address some of these measures honestly, acknowledging what merit they contain – I’ve been clear about what merit they don’t have, perhaps. Gaming room closure extended from four to seven hours is a genuine, if modest, harm-reduction measure. Restricting access restricts consumption and the evidence for closing hours as a partial tool is reasonably established. A 75 per cent increase in mandatory closure time is a real change, and I welcome that. I’m not saying don’t do that. But seven hours of closure means 17 hours of daily operation. For a person with a serious gambling disorder, 17 consecutive hours of daily access is not a meaningful structural barrier. It does not limit what that individual player spends within the 17 hours. It is an improvement over four hours, but it’s not a structural solution. It’s more like window dressing.
The TITO limits tickets to a maximum load of $200 with a machine capable of holding only $100 at any given time. TITO is a widely used gambling industry technology whose primary purpose is operational efficiency. That’s what it’s for. It’s harm-minimisation credentials, such as they are, are secondary and limited. The critical point is this: the TITO is not a player card, a denomination limit is not a spending limit in a meaningful sense such as deployed by the precommitment card. A patron can load and re-load tickets repeatedly within a session. It almost gives this false sense of, ‘I’m not spending as much’. Without a player-based account, while there is no mechanism to track cumulative expenditure over a session, a day, a month, a year, the player-level tracking is precisely what the mandatory card provides and what TITO cannot replicate and could actually cause increased harm.
The proposed new cap on EGMs is really a policy of natural attrition, in my view. The current cap of 2350 EGMs in hotels and clubs has historically not been met. Under the new arrangements, venues may apply for licences up to that cap before 30 June 2026, after which a new cap is set at the number actually licenced. Subsequently, every second machine surrendered or forfeited is removed from the cap. As I said, a policy of reduction through natural attrition that will take generations.
There is an important irony here. The invitation to apply for addition licences before the cap resets could, in the short term, increase the number of operating EGMs. Natural attrition is, by its nature, slow and unpredictable. This is not a supply-reduction strategy; it’s a supply of management strategy. There’s not any constrained demand.
Next is the immediate self-exclusion and facial-recognition technology. Again, this has some merits. Improvements to self-exclusion are genuinely worthwhile. Making the process immediate through QR codes at venues removes friction, that has been a real barrier, as I understand, to people seeking help. That is a good reform. Facial-recognition technology linked to the Tasmanian Gambling Exclusion Scheme will make it harder for excluded patrons to access gaming rooms undetected. This too has genuine merit.
However, we should also understand what these measures can’t do. They only reach people who have already identified as having a problem severe enough to seek exclusion. To get to that, often they’re in a pretty bad way. They do not intervene for the moderate-risk gambler who has not yet sought help. The Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission’s 2022 report recommending the mandatory player card explicitly noted that facial-recognition was not an effective tool for the wider prevention of gambling harm, only for enforcing exclusion orders already in place. That distinction matters. These measures are reactive. The pre commitment card is proactive.
Allowing ATMs in gaming venues deserves direct scrutiny. Our member for Nelson spoke extensively about this. The government is permitting ATMs to be placed inside gaming venues subject to conditions that they carry facial recognition technology and daily withdrawal limits. Tasmania previously has restricted ATM placement in gaming rooms for a very good reason: proximity to cash increases gambling. The research on this is clear. Now ATMs – if this goes ahead – will be onsite. This makes cash more accessible to gamblers, not less. The mitigation – so-called – of facial recognition to detect excluded patrons and a daily withdrawal limit addresses a narrow problem, while potentially increasing exposure to the broader population of at-risk gamblers not yet on the exclusion register.
There is also potential within the package itself if the government’s direction is toward cashless gaming, which is the premise of the ticket-in-ticket-out system, then making cash more accessible by installing ATMs inside venues moves precisely in the opposite direction. The two elements pull against each other; it seems very counterintuitive to me.
The other matter is the three gaming officers to be employed statewide by Hospitality Tasmania. There are 91 venues, 17 hours a day of operation. Three statewide officers is not a compliance infrastructure; it’s a gesture toward one. However, the more important concern is structural. These officers have to be employed by Hospitality Tasmania, the industry body, not an independent statutory regulator, the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission. If the former member for Windermere were here, he would say it was like the fox in charge of the hen house.
Officers employed by an industry body serve, at least in part, that industry’s interests. They have two masters here if this goes ahead. Officers reporting to the Independent Regulator serve the public interest, not the industry they are allegedly monitoring. This structural choice, mirroring the broader shift of ministerial responsibility for gaming from community services to hospitality and small business announced in November 2024, sits behind some of this. Maybe it has been a work in progress for some time. It is a meaningful change. Whose interests is the harm minimisation framework designed to serve? That is the question and we should think about it.
I mentioned previously, the $193,908,165 figure in clause (c) of the motion is not merely a statistic; it’s actually an indictment. The mandatory pre commitment card was announced, a deadline of September 2025 was set, and the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission worked toward implementation. In November 2025, the deadline was deferred indefinitely on the basis of a complexity assessment by MaxGaming – the commercial entity contracted to implement the system – rather than independent expert advice. The Deloitte report commissioned and in preparation throughout this period was published on 23 January 2026, yet on the same day we have the alternative package announced. In the financial year 2024-25 Tasmanian’s lost almost $200 million on poker machines, a decade high.
The Grattan Institute observed that in 2024, the gaming industry’s profits rely on high risk heavy spenders. Survey data indicates that about 5 per cent of those who use pokies account for approximately half of the total spending. This argument about recreational users does not stack up when you look at the actual figures. When losses hit a decade high, it is not because casual gamblers are mildly over indulging, it is because people who cannot stop are losing more than ever. As I said, these machines are designed to addict the user.
These are the Tasmanians for whom the pre commitment card was designed. These are the Tasmanians the January 2026 package is least equipped to help. That’s the government package. The Australia Institute has shown that under most models the cost of EGM-related problem gambling in Tasmania is estimated at up to $184 million in 2011 far exceeds EGM tax revenue. As losses climb past $193 million in 2024 25, the gap between social cost and fiscal term is not closing, it is widening.
Mr President, we move to clause 2 of the motion which calls on the government to answer two specific questions, and I agree with comments that have already been made – they are moderate, targeted and entirely reasonable. They are the minimum that accountability requires.
The government commissioned and published rigorous CGE modelling of the precommitment card and modelling showed net benefits of $153 million to $240 million in gross state product and between 126 238 net additional jobs across all scenarios.
The government declined to implement that reform and instead announced a different package.
The motion simply asked what equivalent independent modelling was done on the alternative package. That’s the first thing.
Was there an independent body that assessed the social and economic impact of seven hour closing, ticket in, ticket out, natural attrition, facial recognition, ATMs in venues and three gaming officers employed by Hospitality Tasmania?
What are those impacts? Were those impacts quantified? How do they compare with what the Deloitte report rejected for the precommitment card? Surely, we need to compare apples with apples.
To date, as I understand it, I haven’t seen any modelling that’s been published. I’m sure the member for Nelson would have circulated it if it had been or the government. If it exists, Tasmanians actually deserve to see it. If it doesn’t exist, if the government adopted this package without independent modelling of its social and economic impacts, and this is very telling, about the attitude of this government to gambling harm through EGMs and the public should know.
Mr President, as members know, the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission is the independent statutory regulator. In 2022, it assessed the evidence and recommended the mandatory precommitment card as the most effective valuable harm minimisation measure and had been working toward it.
This was supported by the then-treasurer and the minister for Finance, Mr Ferguson. This motion asked before the government decided to adopt the January 2026 alternative measures instead did it obtain any advice from the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission on whether those measures would be effective in preventing or reducing harm from poker machines. The TLGCs report of 2022 explicitly accessed facial recognition technology and concluded it was not effective from wider harm prevention only for exclusion enforcement. I’m not saying it has no value, but that’s where its value lies.
Did the TLGC advise the government that the January 2026 package as a whole was an adequate substitute for the mandatory precommitment card? Or did the government adopt this package without that independent expert advice?
In November 2024, the deferral was justified by reference to report from MaxGaming, as I mentioned, a commercial gaming service provider, not the Independent Regulator.
MaxGaming sold a complexity and costing process. MaxGaming’s stated aim is to achieve the best outcome for the industry. That’s who they are working for. This is not the same as independent expert advice on harm minimisation effectiveness.
We and the people of Tasmania are entitled to know whether the TLGC was consulted, what it advised and whether the advice supported the January 2026 announcements.
Mr President, I want to make a broader observation about what this situation represents evidence based government.
The commissioned independent modelling was eventually published, it took a little while, but it was published. It produced clear positive findings across all three scenarios it considered. On the same day that modelling was published, the government announced a completely different policy direction.
We know what the evidence shows with regard to the precommitment card, but the government did not put it in the public domain. The domain is there not about the facts related to this matter; it’s more about the government’s response to these facts.
When a government commissions independent expert analysis, receives findings that favour a particular course of action, they’d be all over it. When the report favours the action that they don’t want to take, then it takes a different course of action, which it has done here without publishing equivalent independent analysis to support the alternative, that is unacceptable from the accountability point of view.
The two questions in this motion are asking for exactly that minimum. We’re not asking the government, at this point, to reverse its decision. We are asking to show its workings; how to get to that point. That should not be a difficult question to fulfil, if the workings exist. The stakes are not abstract: over $193 million, a decade high, in EGM losses. EGM density concentrated in our most disadvantaged communities – mine, the member for Elwick, the member for Montgomery. It’s a pattern the Deloitte report’s own data makes clear. These are the Tasmanians that need effective policy. They are also too often the Tasmanians with the least political power to demand it.
I support this motion. It accurately summarises the Deloitte report’s four key findings. It itemises the government’s 2026 package. It makes clear the amount of losses that we’ve seen, and are seeing, at the moment, and it asks the government two clear questions. I want to be clear, before I finish up, that I’m not saying the government’s January 2026 measures are entirely without value. Extended closing hours, improved self-exclusion, and better enforcement of exclusions have genuine, if limited, merit. I acknowledge these measures. They should be doing all of it – all the things that we know work.
What I’m saying here is that the government has adopted a package that falls substantially short of its own commissioned evidence and what that supports. It has done so without publishing any equivalent independent modelling or revealing whether the independent regulator was consulted on the effectiveness. This is a failure of evidence-based government. It’s a failure that falls most heavily on the Tasmanians who are harmed by poker machines.
The Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission recommended the mandatory pre-commitment card. The former Treasurer and Deputy Premier described it as the gold standard of harm minimisation. I agree with him. The Deloitte report confirms that it would deliver net economic benefits of $153 million to $240 million, and meaningful, targeted reductions in harm.
The question this motion asks is straightforward: show us the modelling and tell us whether you asked the regulator. It’s pretty simple. If the government cannot answer both these questions adequately, this Council will have learned something important about how this decision was made and about whose interests it is designed to serve.
I support the motion.