The New South Wales premier and his deputy appear at odds over the future of cashless gambling cards, with Dominic Perrottet “certainly in favour” of the measure while Paul Toole insists “the technology is not there”.
But the claim by Toole, who is also the National party’s state leader, has been rubbished by gambling policy expert Dr Charles Livingstone, who pointed to schemes in Sweden, Norway and Victoria, insisting it could be rolled out within two years with sufficient political will.
The Coalition this week shelved a bill that could have made the cards mandatory under amendments that had been proposed, shortly after the state’s crime commission handed down a report calling for their introduction to reduce money laundering and the gambling of proceeds of crime in NSW pubs and clubs.
On Wednesday Toole said the government would discuss the card with the industry, but had “read reports” that suggest cashless gaming technology was “not there” yet.
“It’s going to be very difficult to introduce something if the technology’s not available to actually introduce it right now,” Toole said.
“So we need to work with the industry to determine how those cashless gaming cards are to be introduced and how they’re going to look.”
Livingstone, an associate professor at Monash University’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, said multiple versions of the scheme were already in use in Australia and elsewhere. He pointed to a voluntary scheme in Victoria, an impending rollout in Tasmania and successful programs in Scandinavia.
“I don’t know who’s feeding the deputy premier these lines but they are really not accurate,” Livingstone said.
Livingstone said a “network pre-commitment system”, recording people’s limits and gambling across all venues and machines, would require an upgrade to systems.
“There are a number of older machines … and some of those may take a little bit more tweaking, but they all have to be hooked up to the monitoring system [already],” he said.
“Probably three quarters of them are capable of transmitting the data through a monitoring system tomorrow, if they needed to.
“The only real issue is making sure the protocol is right, making sure that you’ve got a supplier who can do it. If you gave them two years to do it, [it] should all be rolled out by the beginning of 2025.”
He noted Tasmania planned to make their entire system cashless by 2024.
“The only resistance to this [in NSW], of course, will be the political pressure that ClubsNSW and the [Australian Hotels Association] can bring to bear.”
Toole said clubs were “very valuable” to regional NSW, noting how many has been used as evacuation centres during floods and fires, as well as Covid vaccination centres.
Nationals MP and hospitality minister, Kevin Anderson, is on the record in his opposition to making such a card mandatory. Liberal transport minister, David Elliott, is also reportedly against doing so.
Toole’s comments came a day after Perrottet insisted he had not abandoned hope for tackling issues surrounding pokies before the March election, saying he would work closely with clubs and pubs “to make meaningful change”.
“We can’t have a situation where people are laundering money or putting their life savings down poker machines,” he said.
“For too long this has been talked about and this is not about penalising clubs or penalising hotels – they play important roles in our community – but we need to bring them on the journey.”
The opposition leader, Chris Minns, has also refused to back the introduction of mandatory cashless gambling cards.
“Given the complexity of it, we need to make sure and look at what people are putting on the table before I give a blanket support for a proposal that I haven’t seen,” he said last week.
ClubsNSW chief executive, Josh Landis, said the group would work with the government “to implement practical, proportionate and affordable responses” to the report.