'Requires two to tango': Shots fired between Labor and Greens during EGM compulsory surrender law debate

Two MLAs have faced off over who’s had the best track record with gaming harm reforms as debate was adjourned over introducing a compulsory surrender scheme for electronic gaming machines (EGMs).

The Gaming Machine (Compulsory Surrender) Amendment Bill 2024 was before the Legislative Assembly on Thursday (26 June) which aims to set up a scheme once the voluntary surrender period ends in the Territory in May 2025.

It had been foreshadowed backbencher Dr Marisa Paterson would move further amendments to the bill to integrate some of the aspects of ACT Labor’s election policy to reduce the number of EGMs in the Territory to 1000 by 2045 (or by 500 each Assembly term).

This didn’t occur and so it remains unclear exactly which elements of the ACT Labor policy will be attempted to be legislated before the October election.

However, Dr Paterson did outline that her amendments would make the reduction of EGMs in the Territory “go further” than what’s in the current Parliamentary and Governing Agreement (PAGA) between her party and the Greens.

“Reducing machine numbers ad hoc from term to term is not in itself an effective way to bring the numbers down,” she said.

“Clubs consistently tell me that they want a long-term plan; that’s why the amendments that I will move to this bill will see a 20-year machine reduction plan implementation.”

The current PAGA aims to see only 3500 machine authorisations by 1 July 2025. There are currently 3780 EGMs in the Territory.

Dr Paterson also took aim at the ACT Greens, in particular Gaming Minister Shane Rattenbury.

The voluntary surrender scheme first started two terms of government ago, when there were 5022 authorisations. She said under a Labor gaming minister this had been reduced by 1134 by the end of the 2020 Assembly (to 3888).

As of 1 June 2024, this number has only reduced by another 108.

“From a 22 percentage reduction under a Labor minister, the Greens Minister Rattenbury has led a 2.7 per cent reduction,” she said.

“Under a Greens Minister, we [also] have not seen a single harm minimisation measure implemented during this term.”

Dr Paterson said the recent “flurry” of action in this space was “electioneering” and she was “sceptical” about the Greens’ true commitment to reducing gambling harm.

Mr Rattenbury didn’t take the comments lying down.

He pointed out that while EGM numbers have been reduced since 2016, the ACT Labor Party had no policy on removing pokie machines in the lead up to either the 2016 or 2020 elections that “I could recall or that I have been able to find online”.

“However the Greens did have policies [on this] at both of those elections, and it was a result of those Greens policies at the 2016 election that the [PAGA] of 2016 required a reduction to 4000 authorisations in the Territory,” Mr Rattenbury said.

“Then we got to the 2020 election … [the Greens policy then] included the reduction of 3500 authorisations by 2025, but in fact our actual policy was to reduce the actual numbers by 30 per cent by 2030.”

The 2020 PAGA negotiations with Labor resulted in the current goal.

Mr Rattenbury also said Dr Paterson’s commentary “fails to take into account” that the Labor Party had previously declined poker machine reform.

“[This is] given the presumable conflict of interest they’ve held and the significant revenue stream that has flown to their political party from poker machines over time,” he said.

“I am, personally, frustrated by the amount of time [gambling harm] reform has taken, but what I can assure members is that I have worked diligently through this term – both with the directorate … and with respect for the joint-governing program that we work under – to actually try and take these measures through the normal Cabinet processes.

“I will continue to endeavour to do that, but that requires two to tango.”

Mr Rattenbury said the government would also move amendments to this bill during the detail stage.

This would remove a clause which requires the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission to reduce the cap of EGM authorisations on each venue’s authorisation certificate in the surrender process.

“This element is not required to support a reduction in authorisations in the Territory to 3500 authorisations,” Mr Rattenbury said.

Surrender obligations will be proportionate to the number of machines that a club has on the floor.

Licensees with less than 20 authorisations won’t have a surrender obligation, but are still encouraged to voluntarily surrender their machines for a payment until the voluntary scheme ends.

The detail stage of the bill will be debated at the next sitting of the Assembly.