Gambling speech by Gary Moore

Gambling, especially the excessive use of gaming machines, does have negative personal and social impacts, which have been identified in landmark reports such as the 1999 Productivity Commission report, the 2004 IPART report and the 2006 incidence report commissioned by the NSW DGR;

Despite the capping of the numbers of gaming machines at 104,000 by the NSW Govt in 2001, all available data since that time indicates that despite the total numbers of machines having reduced, the spending per capita on machines in NSW continues to grow;

This is especially true in relation to machines based in hotels. Also true from the same data is the predominance of high spending per capita in locations where socio-economic status is low or modest;

At the same time, data available from the Government funded Gambling counselling centres across NSW shows that clients seeking assistance with gambling related problems continues to rise. Many front line workers in other community services and health organisations also have reported a growth in the incidence of clients presenting with excessive gambling as one of the issues that they face

The NSW Government is currently reviewing its key piece of legislation that governs the operation of gaming machines in NSW, the 2001 Gaming Machines Act.

Hence the holding of today's Forum and calls for a Gambling Summit to be held in NSW are timely.

What needs to change?

We need a genuine regulatory and harm minimisation regime in NSW that actively delivers greater protections for consumers, greater prevention of problems arising, better public education and research and a greater level of effective localised assistance and support for people, their families and friends who are affected by the negative effects of gambling

We need Commonwealth State financial reform, which among other things, provides incentives for State Government to become less reliant on revenues raised from gaming machines

We need, as in Victoria, a robust system which allows local government, as part of assessing development applications involving venues with gaming machines, to be able to assess the social impacts of expanded or changed facilities, before giving development approval. We need to investigate further whether this also extend to establishing local/regional caps on numbers of gaming machines

We need the NSW Government to improve the workings of the clubs community Development and Support Expenditure Scheme (CDSE) through at least adopting the recommendations of a review into CDSE which has been sitting with the Minister or Cabinet now for several months. We need the Government to implement such a scheme with the State's hotels

Anne we need to consider, as this is a billion dollar industry, further regulatory changes which delivers a genuinely indecent gaming regulator and an inductors ombudsman scheme, which has worked so well in some other industry areas

These types of measures are part of an agenda which needs to be discussed by all the relevant interest groups at a NSW Government sponsored Gambling Summit.

They are the types of initiatives which the newly elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd could examine as part of his discussions with Premiers and Chief Ministers about a new era in Commonwealth State relations.

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