‘May as well do nothing’: Buyback of 2000 pokie machines ‘won’t cut it’

A bipartisan election promise to buy back 2000 poker machines is unlikely to stem multibillion-dollar losses as experts warn the pledge to reduce social harm requires a much bigger culling of machines and the introduction of reduced operating hours.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet last month said his government would buy back machines from clubs if he wins the March poll, a promise matched by his opponent, NSW Labor leader Chris Minns.

Pokies reform has emerged as a key battleground issue of the March 25 state election.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

The buyback commitment from both leaders is a key pillar of their contrasting pokies reform policies: the Coalition has promised to make pokies cashless in five years, while Labor has said it would conduct a mandatory trial of the technology.

Minns has also vowed an uptick in machine forfeitures (for every two machines, one must be retired), claiming that would switch off a further 7500 machines over the next decade.

However, with more than 87,000 poker machines in use in NSW, harm minimisation advocates say the buyback and forfeiture schemes of the major parties do not go nearly far enough.

“They might as well do absolutely nothing than get rid of 2000 machines. That will have absolutely no impact at all, and will do nothing to reduce uptake of gambling,” said Dr Charles Livingstone, a gambling researcher at Monash University’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine.

Livingstone said the experience of other Australian jurisdictions suggests small reductions in the number of machines have zero impact on poker machine revenue, which is more than $7 billion in NSW every year.

“In Victoria, a few years ago, much of the concern was about the concentration of machines in disadvantaged areas. Then regional caps were introduced. So if the average in Victoria was 11 machines per 1000 adults, in the regions that brought it down to eight. It had zero per cent impact on revenue,” he said.

“When machine numbers decline modestly, for example by less than 10 per cent, the utilisation rate of the remaining machines increases, meaning they ‘work’ harder and the losses stay the same or increase.”

Livingstone said NSW was proof that modest reductions in machines did not have an impact. Instead, reducing operating hours and significantly cutting machine numbers was key.

“A decade ago, there were 100,000 machines in NSW. We’ve lost 10,000 machines in a decade, the population has increased, and yet we are seeing record losses every year.”

There are about 45,000 active poker machines in Queensland, 27,000 in Victoria, 3000 in Tasmania and about 11,600 in South Australia.

Perrottet last week said he was prepared to explore the cost of buying back more than the 2000 machines promised in his five-year policy, but insisted government modelling over the next five years recommended 2000 machines was attainable.

Minns said on Monday there would be no change to Labor’s policy before the next election, which also includes other measures such as facial recognition technology, third-party exclusions and banning political donations from clubs with pokies, to which Perrottet has also committed.

“Many of those measures announced by Labor as part of our comprehensive package were in effect stolen by Dominic Perrottet ... that’s a good thing, but I think it gives the lie to the idea that’s the only thing Labor’s proposing in this election campaign,” he said.

Financial Counselling Australia policy director Lauren Levin urged both major parties to outline the modelling that showed their buyback and forfeiture models would curb losses.

“The public deserve to know that the buyback money isn’t just a donation to industry coffers. We need to see the safeguards, and the modelling,” she said.

“Are these machines even on the floor or just coming out of a store room? Not every licensed machine sits on the venue floor. What we really need to see is proper safeguards, so that people don’t spend more money on fewer machines, and that ultimately requires capped spending limits.”

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