By Harriet Alexander and Alexandra Smith
State Labor MPs have invoked an ugly campaign waged against Julia Gillard more than a decade ago amid the battle to reform NSW poker machines, warning that taking on powerful clubs and pubs risks an unnecessary stoush with the election just months away.
The opposition’s muted stance on the growing push for mandatory cashless gaming cards has also earned a stinging rebuke from Australia’s most high-profile anti-gambling crusader, who declared Labor “the party of social injustice”.
NSW Labor leader Chris Minns and former PM Julia Gillard.Credit: Andrew Meares, Nikki Short, Alex Ellinghausen
Alliance for Gambling Reform chief advocate Tim Costello said the reluctance of NSW Labor leader Chris Minns to offer bipartisan support to tackle problem gambling and money laundering through the state’s 100,000 poker machines was “extraordinary”.
“The suburbs where poker machines do the biggest damage, where countless millions are ripped out of the local community, are in traditional Labor electorates,” Costello told the Herald.
“It appears when it comes to poker machines, Labor is the party of social injustice.”
Gillard agreed to a poker machine reform package as part of a crossbench deal to stay in power following the 2010 federal election but walked away from the policy after a ferocious campaign by the gaming industry around the country.
As the debate over the introduction of a cashless gaming card in NSW intensifies, Minns on Monday told his shadow cabinet ministers they could not be distracted from their campaign to win government. This would include avoiding a messy stoush with ClubsNSW.
Instead, Labor needed to stay focused on its bread-and-butter areas such as cost of living, jobs and local manufacturing, anti-privatisation and health and education, Minns told his frontbenchers.
Several sources with knowledge of the shadow cabinet meeting said MPs recalled the life-sized cardboard cut-outs of local members that appeared in the foyers of clubs when Gillard tried to introduce technology that would require poker machine players to commit in advance to how much they wanted to spend.
One Labor frontbencher said there was “collective post-traumatic stress disorder” among them as a result of the campaign against Gillard.
In 2011, ClubsNSW targeted the electorates of 25 Labor MPs, 15 of them in NSW, with Save our Clubs rallies, with some MPs at the time describing the impact of ClubsNSW’s grassroots campaign as “worse than the carbon tax”.
Premier Dominic Perrottet has said he would not make any election commitments to ClubsNSW until the industry moves on recommendations by the NSW Crime Commission, which includes bringing in a cashless gaming system to stop poker machines being flushed with the proceeds of crime. Perrottet has endorsed cashless gaming cards for the state but has not said when or how the scheme would be rolled out.
Minns has also ruled out signing any commitments, on principle rather than in opposition to any policy position ClubsNSW makes.
Writing an opinion piece for the Herald, Costello said Tasmania was able to introduce cashless gambling because the measure had bipartisan support.
“It appears when it comes to poker machines, Labor is the party of social injustice,” activist Tim Costello says.
“NSW will get a cashless gambling card eventually. The public demand for it will build until it is untenable to ignore. Today is the time for our political leaders to ensure they are on the right side of history.”
NSW has banned political donations from gambling companies, but clubs are exempt because they are not-for-profit entities. However, an ABC analysis showed clubs across NSW donated $418,520 to NSW Labor, $179,920 to the NSW Liberal Party and $33,490 to the NSW National Party between January 2011 and June 2021.
The Labor Party also profits from several Labor clubs around Australia, including the Randwick Labor Club which operates 80 poker machines and received $3.1 million in poker machine revenue in 2020. Its objective to raise money for the Labor Party is written into its constitution.
It donated nearly $46,000 to Labor over the 10 years to 2021.
Greens MP Cate Faehrmann has written to Perrottet and Minns seeking multi-partisan commitment to a cashless card and calling on them not to sign any pre-election commitments, arguing that reform could only be achieved if the ties between the political parties and the gambling industry were broken.
“On the back of the inquiries into Crown and Star casinos and now the Crime Commission report, we have a unique opportunity for political leaders to stand together against pressure from the industry and enact gambling reform to reduce gambling harm,” Faehrmann said.
“With the premier’s commitment to implementing a gambling card, there is now only one thing standing in the way of genuine gambling reform in this state and that’s Chris Minns and the Labor Party.”
Several Labor sources said the cap on political donations mitigated the amount of influence they bought and the greater concern for MPs was the prospect of a marginal seat campaign.
ClubsNSW targeted marginal federal seats in NSW through its Save Our Clubs rallies against Gillard’s proposals in 2011, including the western Sydney seats of Lindsay and Greenway, the Central Coast seats of Dobell and Roberston and the regional seats of Eden Monaro and Page.
A former Labor powerbroker said the party might ultimately support the reform, but Minns would steer clear of the issue as long as it was tearing apart the coalition. “There’s an old political saying, ‘Don’t get between your opponent and a bad story’.”
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