The surprising rush by hotels and clubs to join the Minns government’s trial of cashless gaming suggests a large section of the industry recognises that the days of the hard cash game are over, or that our state’s alarming addiction to poker machines has become so untenable that people pressured their local venues to sign on.

Either way, Premier Chris Minns’s cautious commitment to a 12-month trial on 500 machines at pubs and clubs across metropolitan areas of the highest use, other metro areas, and regional areas never looked like a serious attempt to gather evidence about the efficacy of cashless gaming. Now his trial has been swamped by the industry volunteering the use of 5909 machines.

What a turnaround. Last January, after months of criticism by the Herald, gambling reform advocates, grassroots party members and the union movement over NSW Labor’s scandalous apathy on poker machines, Minns announced a package of reforms that contained several commendable elements. Unfortunately, it also included several deeply troubling flaws. Minns promised to ban donations to political parties from venues with poker machines, to ban external signage, to phase out some of the then 90,000 plus poker machines in NSW and to cut the limit that can be fed into new machines from $5000 to $500.

However, the key issue at play in this debate, the proposal by the NSW Crime Commission and former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet to switch all machines to cashless technology, was kicked down the road by Labor. A damning NSW Crime Commission report had found that pokies were being used by criminals to wash dirty money. Cashless technology also just happens to be the area of reform most vigorously contested by ClubsNSW and the NSW branch of the Australian Hotels Association. Labor promised to trial cashless gaming in 500 machines across NSW, a move that was widely criticised by crossbench MPs and gambling reform advocates as being grossly inadequate.

After the election, Labor established an independent 16-person panel to oversee the trial. Members include industry players ClubsNSW and the AHA, the Gaming Technologies Association and Wesley Mission. The panel has met monthly since August.

While it is sensible to have industry figures on the panel overseeing the trial (the gaming sector will need to work with the government on an eventual rollout), the government and reform advocates should remain on their guard because the cashless card is still not a done deal and some forces would still like to kill it and ensure no change occurs.

Gambling reform advocate Reverend Tim Costello attributed Minns’s inability to form majority government last March to his evasion on the issue. We will never know, but the time to reform the poker machine industry is unlikely to be as propitious. The exclusive Resolve Political Monitor for the Herald published on Saturday shows fewer voters now support NSW Labor than when the party was elected in March, and Minns’ popularity has also slipped. Labor’s primary vote is on 36 per cent, down from 37 per cent at the election, while support for Minns as preferred premier dropped to 35 per cent from September’s high of 41 per cent.

The tide has turned on problem gambling and our state has a once-in-a-generation chance to decisively tackle such an insidious problem. The flood of venues wanting to participate in the trial is a heartening sign and verification that the initial tepid suggestion of 500 machines from Labor was always absurdly low and lacked ambition.

Bevan Shields sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.