Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Bills

Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Tim READ (Brunswick) (02:56): My speech is so long we had to break for lunch in the middle. I will just take you back to where I was up to. We were talking about the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence and evidence heard by the commission from Victoria Police that all the money sloshing around the casino has long been attractive to criminals wanting to turn illicit notes into apparently legitimate funds. One experienced officer explained the standard method in plain terms as follows: bring in dirty money, convert it to chips, play briefly, cash out and walk to the bank with a casino cheque. They said this basic laundering ‘would nearly happen on a daily basis’. That is sworn evidence in the commission’s money laundering chapter of their report. Carded play and electronic payouts directly frustrate this old cash and cheque strategy. The commission also adopted the Bergin inquiry’s findings that Crown facilitated money laundering through its Southbank and Riverbank accounts over many years, with Crown later accepting those conclusions and acknowledging ‘significant deficiencies’ in its anti-money laundering response. That history is exactly why Victoria built a transformation regime and tougher compliance settings. Here we find ourselves with Labor delaying those cash and identity rules until the end of 2027.

Beyond the casino we have a national warning. The New South Wales Crime Commission concluded in 2022 that criminals funnel billions of dollars of dirty cash through poker machines in pubs and clubs, calling poker machines ‘one of the last remaining safe havens’ for cleaning cash. Its top recommendation: mandatory cashless gaming with enhanced data and identification. Why? Because traceability – who played, when and how much – breaks the business model of criminal cash. The principle is identical for a casino floor. Postponing carded play and electronic payout rules until 2027 means postponing the best practice anti-money laundering response that Australian crime agencies themselves have urged.

Anti-money laundering is not an abstract compliance box. It is about choking off the revenue streams of organised crime, drug trafficking, human exploitation and fraud. AUSTRAC’s actions and crime commission findings show the sector has been a recurring target. The community expectation after the royal commission was that Victoria would take the shortest road to a traceable, ID-verified gambling environment. This bill takes the long road, and every extra month keeps the door open for criminal cash.

The Greens support what is good in this bill. We support stronger enforcement against Crown and its corporate associates. The corporate associate framework closes a well-known accountability gap by allowing discipline throughout the chain. Letters of censure and fines up to $1 million for associated companies that do not cooperate or notify changes help the regulator keep pressure on associates, not just frontline licence-holders. We support sharper sanctions for ignoring transformation plan directions. The added $1 million per day is the kind of lever the regulator needs to ensure reform deadlines are real and not optional. We support training and supervision standards for table games and authority to limit table occupancy. These are practical measures that improve oversight and reduce risk for staff and patrons, but we cannot accept the grievous and industry-friendly shortcomings of this bill, which kicks core harm-reduction measures out to 2027.

The costs of waiting are borne by the same families we hear from in electorate offices – parents facing rent arrears because a partner’s losses spiked, retirees burning through savings, kids going without. Carded play, mandatory limits and daily cash and payout controls are not abstract reforms, they are seat belts, and we would never vote to delay seat belts for two years after we agreed that they save lives. I suspect many of the members in the chamber today have met families, have met people who have lost far too much money at the casino or on the pokies – families whose suffering could have been prevented if these measures had been instituted last year or five years ago. Delaying these measures another two years means that we will be seeing more families, more individuals who are suffering because of the failure to institute these simple and not overly onerous recommendations.

What we say to the government is: keep the strong parts of the bill; drop the delay. Crown has been given four years notice to get things in place. So let us put people first. Let us deliver the carded play with precommitment reforms that Victoria was promised. Deliver it on time, and give the regulator the teeth and timelines it needs to protect the community.

The Greens oppose the bill in its current form and will be looking at it further over the break. We look forward to hearing from the government – you never know – that they may decide to dispense with the delay.

Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (15:02): I too rise to speak on the Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. This bill, yet again, builds upon our government’s efforts to make gaming in Victoria safer and more responsible for all Victorians. I have had the chance to speak quite a lot about these sorts of reforms in this place over the last couple of years, and what we know is that when it comes to gambling losses, it is communities like mine in the western suburbs – suburbs that suffer from systemic economic disadvantage generation upon generation – that end up sustaining the greatest losses, sadly. We know that through the data and the statistics that are collected. It is communities like mine that are some of the hardest hit, and they lose hundreds of millions of dollars each and every single year, and that is really into poker machines.

In the last financial year, Victorians collectively lost over $7.3 billion to all different types of gambling. More than half of this was through pokie machines and of course at the casino. The Crown Casino alone accounted for $957 million in gambling losses over this period. It does not please me to say at all that the City of Brimbank, which I represent, tops the list when it comes to gambling losses, accounting for more than $175 million in losses. That is an appalling amount of money. As I said, suburbs and neighbourhoods, streets with some of the most economically disadvantaged people here in Victoria – $170 million a year in losses. In the July that has just passed, Brimbank lost – this is just July – $16.5 million in just one month. Can you believe that? $16.5 million in one month.

As someone who likes to build stuff in their electorate – and we need to build a lot of stuff – I think about what that $16.5 million could have gone towards, and I can tell you: a hell of a lot of things. This is something that greatly concerns me and my community as a local member, and I applaud the advocacy of Brimbank City Council in sticking up for locals and being a champion of gambling reform. When I was chairing the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee when we held our inquiry into the gambling and liquor regulations, I recall having the public hearings and hearing from so many services and operators, people on the front line that are having to counsel and support problem gamblers, and the stories that they can tell you about what is happening with these families, with gambling addiction at the centre of it, are absolutely appalling. It is a disgusting scourge on our local communities.

I went ahead and visited with I think the Minister for Mental Health and, at one stage, gambling and liquor regulation on another occasion in Sunshine, meeting with the services that deal locally with folks in Brimbank and in the greater western suburbs that are struggling with gambling addictions and provide that kind of support to those locals and also, most importantly, to their families. As I said, this is a scourge on our local community, and the devastation that the family unit suffers when one of their loved ones has a gambling problem or is a gambling addict is absolutely appalling – and it is a lifelong addiction. These are real issues, and to no-one’s surprise, these issues are multifaceted and involve social, economic and mental issues.

We have known that we need major changes in our gaming industry for a long time, especially when it comes to Crown Casino. It is why our government committed to the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence and then accepted and agreed to deliver on all 33 recommendations. It is why we committed to cleaning up our pokies venues, including uniform closing periods, mandatory precommitment and slowing the spin rates of many new gaming machines.

It should be clear that while we accept – and I do accept; I have talked here in this place about how my Nanna Jean, who has been passed away now almost the past decade, loved going and having a punt on the pokies. She loved it. She used to go down to the local bowling club on pension day. She was a not a very wealthy lady whatsoever. She was also deaf; she went deaf at 50, which was incredibly isolating for her. But she loved the pokies, and I think she used to bet 5-cent pieces that would go in. This woman had nothing, but with the cheap meal she would go down, and she enjoyed doing that. It was part of her social interaction as she struggled with going deaf at 50.

But I will say that it is really important to minimise the risk of vulnerable people – because it is not all people – taking it too far and losing hundreds, if not thousands or even tens of thousands, of dollars on a night at the pokies. If left unfettered, irresponsible gambling can destroy lives, and that is something I have heard directly from, as I have said, many of the agencies that service my community – and there are many, many services across Melbourne’s west, because some of the hardest hit parts in Victoria are in our local neighbourhoods.

Today’s bill in particular relates to Crown Casino. It builds upon that commitment to implementing those 33 recommendations. We have made sure that Crown obeys some very, very strict gambling settings – and I think it should have always been this way – including mandatory carded play on all EGMs and, as of this year, electronic tables. It is interesting, because I do not think I have ever set foot inside the gambling component of Crown Casino, so I am not quite sure what an electronic table consists of or would even look like. When I think of gambling, it is always the pokie machines, because Nanna used to like us to go down there and spend time with her, but she would be playing on the machines.

But we have implemented binding precommitment limits on all EGMs at Crown Casino so that players can, most importantly, manage their gambling and avoid taking it too far. We have reduced load limits from $2000 to $1000 at the casino so that players cannot just load up a large amount of money at once into one machine. We have also limited the amount of hours a person can play – I always find this absolutely extraordinary, how long some people can sit at these machines. We have limited the amount of hours without a break to 3 hours – that is still a really long time. You think about sitting on your phone for 3 hours – that is a really long time. That is longer than they are making Hollywood movies nowadays. I think the last 3-hour movie that I watched was probably on the weekend with the kids, and that was The Lord of the Rings. The breaks are now at 3 hours, and there are no more than 12 hours in a day and no more than 36 hours in a week.

What this bill does is build upon the changes that we have made. It also goes ahead and strengthens them. The bill does so by empowering the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission with stronger watchdog powers to, really importantly, hold Crown Casino to account. The bill will increase penalties for noncompliance with a direction from the regulator. Currently that penalty is a one-off $10,000 fine, but these changes mean it will now be a daily penalty of $1 million until compliance is achieved, and I think that is a much clearer, much more realistic penalty for noncompliance. What we are doing through this penalty – the change in penalty units and the amount of money that Crown can be hit with – is we are making it very, very clear that when it comes to implementing these changes, Crown cannot drag its feet. This bill is going to go further than just regulating Crown Casino itself, it is going to extend the regulator’s scope to include all of Crown’s corporate associates.

This is a really important bill. I have talked about the amount of harm that gambling causes just in Brimbank alone, and I represent Hobsons Bay, Brimbank, Maribyrnong and Wyndham. I have four of the best or worst LGAs in Melbourne’s west, and each one of those LGAs has gambling losses in the millions – it just is absolutely extraordinary, as I have said. The Laverton electorate takes in some of the most vulnerable suburbs here in Victoria. 2017 was the last time that we lifted the cap in relation to the maximum number of entities that a single club operator can hold, and I imagine there will be a lot of clubs and a lot of RSLs and venues who want to phase out gambling machines but cannot afford to do so, and we do want to see that. I commend the bill to the house.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (15:13): I rise to make a contribution to the Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, and this is a bill that the opposition are not opposing. I want to begin my contribution with a little bit of history. This bill deals with casinos and gaming generally, and I am going to just start with the history around the casino, because history was made on 30 June 1994, when Melbourne first got a casino. It was at the World Trade Centre, and I was quite aware of it because it was near where I was working and it was a big deal for Melbourne at that time. They moved to the permanent location a few years later, on 8 May 1997, and the casino now is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the exception of Christmas Day, Good Friday and Anzac Day, when it closes between 4 am and 12 pm. Crown itself, if we are still on the casino, has really established itself as one of the major tourist destinations in Melbourne. It is the single biggest employer, having some 13,000 employees, and that is a lot of people to actually try and manage, making sure you do the right thing by each of them. The turnover is about $2 billion, which is itself really enormous, and they spend about $417 million each year on about 1900 suppliers, and a lot of those would be local suppliers in and around Melbourne and Victoria.

The poker machines are a little bit different. Joan Kirner introduced gambling in hotels and clubs in 1991, and at that time – and you may remember, Acting Speaker O’Keeffe – the poker machines and gambling, poker machines particularly, were always over the river, always in New South Wales. There were so many clubs that established themselves on the New South Wales side of the Murray River as poker machine destinations, and people from Victoria would flock there. If they wanted to gamble, the big place to go was Wrest Point casino in Tasmania, at Sandy Bay in Hobart.

With regard to the poker machines, they were set up with a bit of a duopoly, and it has not always been smooth sailing. The government did have a look at how to get rid of this duopoly at one point, and they actually had what we could call a fire sale of poker machine licences. I have got to refer to an article in the AustralianFinancial Review in 2011, from 30 June, saying:

The state poker machine licence auction conducted by the previous Labor government was one of the “greatest financial debacles in Victoria’s history” …

That was what former Premier Ted Baillieu said.

Victoria missed out on $3 billion because of how the sale was structured, a report into the auction of 27,500 pokies in May last year by Auditor-General Des Pearson says.

It was tabled in Parliament.

Mr Pearson said the auction delivered $980 million to the state, but he found the market value was $3.7 billion to $4.5 billion.

So they missed out, because of their mismanagement, on $3 billion. Also with the poker machines, there has been a fair bit of gambling harm, and there have been changes on the way, having removed ATMs from gambling venues. This is something that the member for Malvern, when he was the responsible minister, pursued. There was also the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, which was set up. It is exceptionally disappointing to hear that was given the kibosh fairly recently, particularly in light of comments made on the other side of the house during this debate and also during the procedural debate that followed, looking at the adjournment motion here, where there were issues regarding gambling harm, which seemed to be of such importance to those in the government. But none of them have actually lobbied the government to say, ‘You should not have abolished the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation.’ It is with the greatest hypocrisy that those opposite view this gambling harm.

We had the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence in 2021, and the commission found some terrible cases of misconduct, deeming Crown unsuitable to hold a casino licence due to money laundering, criminal associations, tax evasion and illegal gambling activities. There were 33 recommendations carried out in and around mandatory carded play, limits on cash deposits and daily withdrawals.

This bill we have before us looks at both the Casino Control Act 1991 and the Gambling Regulation Act 2003. I am going to start with the Casino Control Act. The aim here is for greater transparency in the regulation of the gaming industry. There are a couple of different areas that it covers – provisions, carded play. Crown have adapted all their electronic gaming machines – they have done the right thing and adapted to the requirements under the recommendations – and for electronic gaming tables. The gaming tables are where you sit and you play blackjack or roulette against a machine, not in the old-fashioned way, where you would have other people around and a croupier. It is much more difficult to implement the recommendations and the changes required for that component. Crown have advised that they need time. The new technology that they are investing in is something about $40 million, which is quite significant. We need to be mindful of the fact that technology changes fairly rapidly, and to bring this technology into the final stages of development and then do the appropriate testing to make sure that everything is up to speed takes a bit of time. This is why in this bill there is an extension of two years. Crown have advised that they will not meet the deadline, so the government have agreed that they will extend it by two years to 1 December 2027, rather than 1 December in a few months. As I have said, this is dealt with under the section on cashless gaming and mandatory carded play.

There are also some other provisions around cashless banking and payments and the provisions around how gaming accounts can be credited, including a cash deposit of up to $1000 each day, electronic funds transfers from a bank in the same name as a gaming account and transfers from a deposit account.

There are a few changes here that are trying to bring greater transparency and protect those that are gambling with some measures against harm. There are four new areas of power that have been added for creating regulations on carded play requirements: procedures for verifying a person’s identity before allowing them to play; prohibiting a person from using a player’s card that is not in their name – you could imagine that it is probably quite easy to just say, ‘Hey, grab my card,’ but this is making sure that it is above board, dinky-di, that you are the person that has that card; the training and supervision requirements for casino employees in relation to the playing of table games; and restricting the number of people able to play a table game at the casino.

Looking at the Gambling Regulation Act, there is a change of definitions here. The most important provisions here are about increasing gaming machine entitlements. The proposal is for the gaming machine entitlements to increase from 840 to 1260. What has happened over the course of the couple of decades when we have had these machines is a number of smaller clubs, not pubs, had a number of licences. They have found it to be not profitable for them. It is not worth their while, and it has been very difficult for them to offload them, so they kind of feel like they have been a little bit lumbered. But changing this will allow them to exit the pokies market, and the bigger clubs will be able to purchase the machines with this new entitlement cap. So this change is a positive step as far as a lot of smaller venues are concerned that did lock into that 20-year loan for the electronic gaming machine licences that they purchased that are not profitable any longer. As I have mentioned, it has been very difficult for these clubs to onsell these licences because the big players were at capacity. If the big players now have additional capacity, there is that opportunity for that movement to happen. This increase from 840 to 1260 will help resolve that.

In terms of stakeholder feedback, the AHA, Australian Hotels Association, and CCV, Community Clubs Victoria, support this bill and particularly the extension of two years for Crown. It cannot be overestimated, the value that Crown brings to Victoria in terms of tourism. People do not just go there to gamble; there is that whole entertainment complex around it. You only have to go there in the evenings to see how busy it is. People are at the restaurants, at the fast-food eateries and at the movies. There are lots of shows. There is a lot that happens in that precinct, and it needs to be supported.

Steve McGHIE (Melton) (15:23): I rise today to contribute on the Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, and I acknowledge the previous contributions from everyone that has had their go so far. I am pleased that the opposition are not opposing this bill.

As with every gambling amendment that I have spoken on, I have always acknowledged that I am a gambler, and I have gambled on many, many things throughout my time. I have always been a gambler and probably will be for the rest of my life. I am sure the bookies and the TAB will be very happy with that, let me tell you, let alone my mates at the football club and every other club that I bet on. I am not a big gambler on pokies, though. Most times if I play the pokies, it is only because I want to have another drink. They are there just to amuse me while I am drinking sometimes. I do not do it very often. But it is good. I always stay within my limits, let me say, and I always do it just in fun. I do not believe I have an addiction – I hope I do not. But of course it is not always the way with some people, and we have certainly got to protect many, many people in our community.

I should say, in the local government area of Melton I think the gambling losses amounted to about $82 million in the previous financial year compared to the one before, which was about $51 million. So there has been a massive increase in gambling losses in the Melton LGA each year, but in particular over the last year. It is probably just an indication of people becoming quite desperate with the cost of living and trying to gamble their way out of trouble, which never, ever works, unfortunately.

It is not just the financial issues with gambling but also the issue of the addiction, which leads to mental stress, family issues and breakdown of families and even leads to, unfortunately, some people either threatening to take or being successful in taking their lives. I think from the period of 2009 to 2016, 4.2 per cent of suicides were linked directly to gambling, which was about 184 cases that were directly linked to gambling causes.

It is ironic that yesterday we had Racing Victoria in here and a couple of beautiful horses, beautiful thoroughbreds, one that had won the Caulfield Cup and another one that had won the Melbourne Cup – magnificent animals – and then after that there was an event in the south library talking about the launch of the Spring Racing Carnival. I know many members that are in here were there yesterday enjoying themselves, trying to get a tip for the Spring Racing Carnival. We heard from that – it is one of the great events here in Victoria – it delivers an economic windfall of about $3.1 billion to the state. There are 25,000 jobs within the racing industry. It is an important industry and it is an important event, the Spring Racing Carnival. It is world renowned. Again, these are some of the benefits of gambling, but also we have got to be cautious about the detriments of gambling and try to protect people from becoming addicted.

The Allan Labor government has led the nation in casino reform and tackling gambling harm. We established the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence, and we are delivering on all of the 33 recommendations handed down by that royal commission. The Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 amends the Casino Control Act 1991 to support the implementation of recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence and to ensure that our Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission has the appropriate powers it needs to hold Crown Melbourne to account, and clearly it needs to be held to account. They have made a few errors through the way, and surely they need to be accountable for some of the things that were going on down there.

This bill also amends the Gambling Regulation Act 2003 to support balanced gaming machine ownership across the state and to make it easier for community clubs that want to step back from the pokies business to do so. There are many, many of those clubs that thought that the pokies were going to be the greatest things for them in regard to financial benefit, and in some cases it has not worked out, in particular for some of our local sports clubs that were relying on the revenue from gaming machines. It just has not worked out for them in some cases, and they have certainly stepped back from that. I know that a number of those clubs, in particular football clubs and golf clubs, have really moved away from the gaming machines.

Following the royal commission, the government established the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission as a regulator, and that was focused solely on the gambling industry. Carded play has been in place at Crown since the end of 2023 on all electronic gaming machines and will be extended to electronic table games this year. Gaming areas in pubs and clubs are legally required to close between the hours of 4 am and 10 am, which is terrific. I have raised this in my area of Melton – at some of the clubs in Melton where they were open basically 24 hours. I could see no reason why someone would be in a gaming venue at 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the morning unless they had an addiction to gambling. I questioned it when some licences were extended or some hours of operations were extended at some of the clubs throughout the Melton area in regard to being open virtually throughout the night, so I am pleased to say that pubs and clubs are legally required to close between 4 am and 10 am. This limits the amount of time a person can spend gambling, and that is hopefully reducing the potential for addiction and the great losses of money.

Some of the other things that we have done: we have reduced load-up limits and we have limited EFTPOS cash withdrawals to $500 per card for every 24-hour period.

At Crown Casino we have limited how many hours a person can play, with no more than 3 hours of continuous play without a break. I think it is important to break the cycle by not being in there for hour after hour after hour, so people have to have a break after 3 hours, even though 3 hours seems like a long time. There is no more than 12 hours play within a 24-hour period and no more than 36 hours during a seven-day period, and this again is primarily about protecting people in regard to gambling and gambling addiction and their being captured by those, whether it be the machines or whether it be the tables. But certainly the machines are addictive – there is no doubt about that. The technology is addictive.

Crown Melbourne is working towards delivering its commitments under the Melbourne transformation plan, a program of over 100 initiatives focusing on improved compliance, operations, customer experience, gambling harm and investment over the coming years. To incentivise Crown Melbourne to continue its transformation and deter against any delays, the bill ensures that noncompliance with a direction issued by the regulator that relates to the Melbourne transformation plan can be met with specific and strong disciplinary action in the form of an additional fine not exceeding $1 million for every day of noncompliance.

I do want to go to a couple of things that the member for Brunswick raised, and they are primarily on his focus on anti-money-laundering aspects. I have got to say that Crown must comply with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006, which is enforced by AUSTRAC. There is already an existing limit of $1000 on the amount of cash the casino operator may pay to a person in a single transaction. Amounts above this must be paid by EFT or cheque, and the casino operator can make multiple payments of up to $1000 to a person in a day. Of course there has been mandatory carded play on EGMs – pokies – at Crown since 2023. We have reduced the load-up limit, as I have previously said, which was lowered from $2000 to $1000. That was done back in 2023, and again that reduces the amount of cash that can be inserted into a gaming machine. Single-patron bank accounts is another issue that has been raised. This is an important bill. It is about protecting people. I commend the bill to the house.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (15:33): I rise to speak on the Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. It is a bit back to the future for me, having dealt with a lot of the legislation with respect to gaming and gambling over the last couple of years as the previous shadow minister, and I guess it highlights an issue that is sometimes lost by those who wish to see gambling curtailed or removed from our society. I understand the harms that come from gambling and casinos – there is no question that there are harms – but I also note that in the couple of years that I had the portfolio there was a lot of legislation with respect to the casino but also gambling and electronic gaming machines more broadly. That was partly as a result of the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence, but it also highlights that there is a lot of regulation and that this is a heavily regulated sector with a number of agencies oversighting different levels and different parts of the sector, and this is just one further part of it.

Previous speakers have all mentioned the royal commission, and it is important to remind the house that the government at the time had to be dragged kicking and screaming to actually take action on the nefarious activities that had previously been going on at Crown. Indeed they only came to light because of a royal commission in New South Wales, and my predecessor in the role, the then member for Euroa, was very strong in raising concerns that the government and particularly the then regulator, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation, had been asleep at the wheel. That led to significant reforms that the government implemented to address the concerns at Crown.

What I have always objected to is that some of that regulation that was brought in to, quite rightly, bring Crown onto a tighter leash and ensure that it was doing the right thing – removing criminal activity, reducing gambling harm, all of the issues that we all support – was unnecessarily extended to smaller operators, particularly the clubs and pubs, when they had done nothing wrong and when there was no evidence in some circumstances that particularly the money laundering and other activity was happening in clubs or pubs. So I was pleased that the legislation that passed a few months ago was far more reasonable than was originally intended when it came to mandatory carded play, because we know that our pubs and clubs, particularly in our regional areas, are really important parts of our communities. They provide employment, they provide a social outlet for people and they provide somewhere warm and welcoming for many vulnerable people, the elderly and the disadvantaged, who enjoy the company going there. They sometimes go and play the pokies. Personally, I do not understand that; it is not something that I find interesting. I really quite dislike them, which made it an interesting issue being the shadow minister. But I also take the view that these machines are legal, they are heavily regulated and people are entitled to go and enjoy them if they choose to do so.

With respect to the legislation specifically that we are dealing with today, I do have a little bit of a desire to say ‘I told you so’ on some of this. The government at the time a couple of years ago was implementing the royal commission’s recommendation faithfully to introduce carded play not only on electronic gaming machines but also on table games. I had discussions, obviously, with the government at the time and also with the casino. I actually went to the casino at the time, and they gave me a tour around and an overview of how they were to implement the new legislation. I did ask the question: are you going to be able to deliver the technology to have carded play on table games by the December 2025 deadline? And the answer was, ‘It’ll be tight because it doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, but we can do so.’ I feel I was a little sceptical at the time. Again, I am not an expert, certainly, in gaming technology, but it did seem to be that it would be a very difficult task to implement such a raft of recommendations and regulation, and it was probably no great surprise to me when we got called in for a briefing a couple of weeks ago with the member for Ovens Valley, highlighting that this legislation was being introduced to extend the deadline by another two years. We do not see this as a sweetheart deal for Crown; we see the pragmatic reality of it. But it is a little bit amusing in some respects that this was seen to be very achievable two years ago. We were assured that it would be, and it has turned out not to be the case. We are dealing with, as I understand it, pretty much a world first in terms of the technology that is being used, and so we understand that there needs to be some flexibility in it.

I think it is also important that the government gets this right, because we know how big the casino is. It is not just a gambling operation, it is an entertainment venue and a significant attractor for the city of Melbourne, whether it is people coming in specifically to play, the high rollers or others, or more particularly those who come to the city for our events, for our activities, for tourism, for holidays and then choose to go to Crown for the food, the entertainment, the gambling or whatever it might be. We need to make sure, firstly, that the casino operator is fit and proper and that they are doing the right thing and that crime and organised crime in particular are minimised within and around the casino precinct but also that we are protecting it as a venue and as a major tourism attraction for the city and for indeed the state.

I note also the legislation makes a change to the Gambling Regulation Act 2003, which increases the cap on gaming machine entitlements for clubs. To be honest, I am a little surprised there has not been more opposition to that publicly – maybe it is still to come. That is largely about the bigger club operators – not single venues, but operators that have multiple venues. Currently the cap is 840 EGMs, and the legislation increases this to 1260. Whether that is necessary or appropriate remains to be seen, but I do know there are many clubs around the state who have a small number of machines who are struggling and are not really able to afford them. The machines are not the goldmine they once were, that is for sure, particularly for clubs. Some clubs are in a situation where they really would like to offload them, but there are not too many alternatives to sell them to. The lifting of the cap will give some of those bigger operators the opportunity to pick up some of those entitlements, which is a benefit for the community if it means that smaller clubs – whether they are bowls clubs, golf clubs, tennis clubs, whatever they might be – will actually have the opportunity to get out.

I think there is a case for us providing some sort of secondary opportunity at some stage to actually reduce the number of EGMs across the state and, if there is demand for it, to have some sort of surrender scheme available. I know we had that. Mr Mulholland in the other place ran a very strong campaign with respect to the Glenroy RSL, which had purchased new entitlements but was then knocked back ultimately by the Supreme Court from actually expanding and installing those entitlements, but the state was still forcing them to pay for them. Eventually the minister agreed that there would be a surrender scheme for those circumstances. It took a while, but it was good work by Mr Mulholland and certainly is one that needs to be considered more broadly. We will certainly see. Let us hope this two-year extension allows the technology to develop and the casino can continue to implement the gambling harm reduction measures that are required.

Vicki WARD (Eltham – Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Natural Disaster Recovery, Minister for Equality) (15:43): I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.