Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Gambling and Liquor Regulation in Victoria: A Follow up of Three Auditor-General Reports

Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (10:24): It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise to speak on committee reports this week, particularly because I tabled and I will now speak on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report on gambling and liquor regulation here in Victoria. This report was really a follow-up to three Auditor-General reports, which as I said I had the privilege of tabling earlier this week – yesterday actually. The inquiry aimed to look at three reports that were tabled in the last term of Parliament about the impact of gambling and alcohol harm in our communities and to also look at how the government was tracking in addressing some of these issues.

Over the past five years that I have been here we have had many, many bills come before this house, and many members on both sides of the house have made incredible contributions in relation to their thoughts, their opinions and sometimes their lived experience in relation to gambling and alcohol-related harm. So it was really interesting undertaking this inquiry.

The committee received over 50 submissions from across the community – that is a lot of submissions to receive. We received those submissions from councils, from local support groups, from people with lived experience and indeed from industry participants. We also held three days of live hearings where we had the opportunity to hear directly from a number of these stakeholders, including universities, organisations that work directly with the people affected by gambling and liquor harm, multicultural organisations and local government. I always think – and the member for Wendouree touched on this – it is really great when you are doing committee hearings and preparing reports that the committee works really closely together. I also think it is really important that committee members sit down and hear from the community and key stakeholders face to face about their lived experience and their shared experience, good and bad – that they are able to speak directly to committee members when we have these public inquiries. It is one thing to read stories, facts and data on paper as part of a written submission. It is certainly something else when someone sits before you to give oral evidence, sometimes sharing quite traumatic experiences of things that they have gone through, as we saw at the youth round table, which I will touch briefly upon in a moment.

I would also like to acknowledge the I am going to say few representatives – because we did invite a lot of representatives from the industry, but it was just a few that I think did a really good job in accepting our invitation to appear and engage as part of this inquiry with committee members. The conversation around gambling and liquor regulation here in Victoria and harm and harm minimisation is not always an easy one to have on either side, whether you are someone that has found yourself in situations where you are addicted to alcohol or gambling or indeed you work for industry bodies that provide these services and encourage the community to use them. But I do want to say that I really appreciated the industry coming and having a full and frank conversation with us. There were not a lot of you. Of the few people that sat before us I think that committee members were able to ask some really serious, robust questions, and they answered frankly and as truthfully as they could. So I do want to thank them again.

This topic is certainly one that I feel particularly strongly about, and for many of the communities I represent in the Laverton electorate gambling risk is something that is constantly raised with me, whether it is by constituents or by local councils. We know that outer suburban communities like Brimbank and Melton in the outer west are some of the hardest-hit areas when it comes to gambling losses, which is commensurate with the number of available gaming venues, whether they are pubs, whether they are clubs or even whether they are our local RSLs. It is why the report recognises that the gambling reforms that we recently passed, including standardising operating and closing times for venues, introducing mandatory precommitments to cashless gaming and reducing load commitments on gaming machines, are all welcome improvements. Like so many things, we have done a lot in this space, but of course there is more that we can and we must do, which is why this report makes a total of 62 recommendations to further address gambling harm, focusing on issues like safeguards for children and young people to protect them from gambling harm and things around advertising and marketing of gambling. This is a great report, and I would encourage all members to take a read.