Felicity Wilson pushes for tougher pokies rules on the North Shore

It’s not every day you see Liberals supporting the Greens and the National Party aligning with Labor, but that’s the sort of impact New South Wales’ rampant gambling addiction is causing in state parliament. 

❓What happened: Last month Greens MP Cate Faehrmann put forward a bill to the upper house that would force pubs around NSW to turn off their pokies at midnight.

Catching up: Clubs and pubs are already not meant to be running poker machines 24/7.

• They’re allowed to because of various exemptions and loopholes. For example: if they operate in an area frequented by tourists, or if there are other hospitality venues in the area with extended hours.

• Currently, the pokies shutdown period for venues is 4am - 10am.

🏡 Local impacts:  North Shore MP Felicity Wilson is one of the voices from within the Liberal party who has suggested the Coalition support this bill.

• “There’s no guardrails, at the moment, for people who have a problem. No genuine guardrails,” Wilson told the Lorikeet. “This notion of ‘should Liberals, Nationals, vote with the Greens… I don’t think our community wants us to write off another party automatically”

• “There should be bipartisan support for reducing gambling harm.”

🧠 Big losses: There are 87,000 pokie machines in NSW, and in the last quarter the state lost $2.2 billion dollars to them.

• While the total number of gamblers in Australia is dropping, our problem gamblers are rising — quite significantly — coming to be 2.9% of our population. That number is largely made up of younger people.

🏎️ Zoom in: Pokies losses in Mosman / North Sydney / Woolahra from March to May totalled $6,536,477.

🤔 Why would someone be against pokies reform? Some opposition to this bill within the NSW Coalition comes from rural representatives, particularly members of the National party, who are concerned about the impact on local businesses. Historically, members of the National Party in NSW have been against gambling reforms, and Labor Premier Chris Minns said last month he would be against the bill because of potential impacts to the economy.

Would tightening restrictions on pokies harm NSW businesses? To put it bluntly: no. That’s according to Reverend Stu Cameron, the CEO of not-for-profit Wesley Mission,  one of the key organisations researching gambling harm and pushing for gambling reform.

• For every dollar of taxation revenue that’s earned its at least five times that amount in cost to the economy when it comes to lost productivity, crime, and mental health issues,” said Cameron.

• “We’ve had more than six decades of little to no regulations. It’s been a no-go zone for successive governments, whether its Coalition or Labor… it was really coming into the last election… it was the Coalition’s commitment to reform that really opened up the conversation in a way that hadn’t been possible before.”

Decision inbound: A vote on Faehrmann’s bill will take place in the final sitting period of the year.