‘Do we care about player safety?’ Casino boss wants mandatory pokies reform

The chief executive of Australia’s largest casino says the gambling industry has a social responsibility to look after its customers and carded play should be mandatory for poker machines if governments are serious about reducing gambling harm.

Crown Melbourne CEO Mike Volkert said there had been a significant reduction in gambling harm among its patrons since it installed mandatory carded play on its 2600 poker machines last December, and the financial impact was the cost of doing business in a regulated industry.

Crown Melbourne chief executive Mike Volkert, right, and former Crown Resorts chief executive Ciaran Carruthers at Flemington.Credit: Tash Sorensen

“We’re not a corner store – we don’t have a right to exist,” Volkert said. “We have a licence, and with that comes obligations.”

The NSW government’s independent panel on gambling reform recommended in a report released on Tuesday that “account-based gambling” should be mandatory for poker machines in pubs and clubs under a model broadly consistent with the one Crown has introduced.

But industry groups have rejected the proposal, saying it is not supported by evidence and will severely affect revenue and jobs.

Gambling revenue at Star Entertainment plunged 15.5 per cent in the first four weeks after Star Sydney was required to introduce mandatory carded play and $5000 cash limits in October.

Crown, which spent more than $20 million developing its technology, has been forced to slash 1000 jobs since it was introduced to its Melbourne casino.

ClubsNSW said tens of thousands of jobs could be lost and venues could close across the state if the model was applied to clubs.

“The economic and societal impact if similar job losses were to be experienced across the industry is likely to far outweigh the marginal reduction in gambling harm and money-laundering that account-based play for gaming machines might bring about,” it argued in feedback to the executive committee.

The casinos have lobbied the government to make carded play mandatory across the sector to level the playing field.

Volkert said unless the whole gambling industry was forced to play by the same rules, people would simply play pokies at other venues.

“If it’s voluntary, you have to ask yourself – do we really care about player safety or not?”

More than 400,000 people have signed up to Crown’s technology, which the Victorian government made a condition of its licence after an inquiry found it had facilitated money-laundering and disregarded its legal and ethical obligations to people with gambling problems.

Players’ personal accounts are linked to a central database, stating how much they are prepared to lose, and the only information passed onto the casino to activate their cards is whether the player can gamble according to their limits.

Volkert said public sentiment towards poker machines had shifted and industry needed to take player health into account if it wanted a sustainable future, comparing the current angst to the public health response to smoking in the 1990s.

“At some point we decided as a society we weren’t going to allow smoking indoors … and if you lit up in a restaurant now, people would freak out.”

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