Chris Minns is sorry about all the pokies. This week, after this masthead reported two senior Labor figures from the Left and Right factions – Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne and Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey – had each put forward motions calling for a significant reduction in poker machines to the party’s upcoming state conference in July, the premier lamented the state of the industry.
“If we were starting from scratch, there’s no way we would deploy 90,000 total machines in suburbs across Sydney and NSW,” Minns said. But he quickly relegated the issue, once again, to the too-hard basket. “I just caution against there being supposed buckets of money to compensate clubs if we were going to drive them out of business.”
Leave aside, for a moment, the very clubs-inspired line that cutting poker machine numbers means driving them to ruin, the “sorry, but” response just about sums up Labor’s attitude to poker machines since coming to power.
The question is, why?
The reality is NSW has probably missed its Nixon-goes-to-China moment on pokies.
In the lead-up to the 2023 election, then Liberal premier Dominic Perrottet adopted an ambitious reform target: a move to mandatory cashless gaming cards in clubs and pubs within five years, along with a regional transition fund, no-interest loans for smaller venues to buy cashless machines and $50,000 grants to help them diversify their offering away from gambling.
Rather than offer Perrottet bipartisan support to cut the legs out from any campaign by the clubs, Labor refused to back the plan. Instead, it committed to a weak and doomed-to-fail voluntary trial of the cashless gaming technology. Minns has long maintained he was not convinced about cashless gaming.
Fair enough, though, once again, it’s interesting that his views seemed to align much more closely with Clubs NSW’s than, say, the NSW Crime Commission’s. But that doesn’t really explain the absolute lethargy with which Labor has approached the issue since.
In government, Minns appointed David Harris as minister for gaming and racing, as well as for an Indigenous treaty. They may as well have called him minister for things Minns doesn’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole. The expert panel appointed to run the cashless trial dissolved into acrimony. Some 18 months after it released its recommendations, the government is yet to respond.
Though the government points to changes it has made – such as reducing cash input limits – its promise to remove 9500 poker machines from circulation was abandoned after advice it would be too costly.
The reality is politics. The influence of the clubs industry is well known. The tax-subsidised ClubGrants program, and its reach to local sports clubs and community groups, gives the industry enormous leverage with local MPs. And many Labor MPs have never forgotten the enormous damage clubs inflicted on the Gillard government with a marginal-seat campaign at the 2013 election.
In the lead-up to 2023, Perrottet told me: “One member said to me, there are four levels of government in their electorate. Federal government, state government, local government and clubs. And therein lies the problem.”
But probably more importantly, Labor does not believe it will cost it much if it does not seriously address the pokies problem. While most voters likely believe it’s not ideal for the state to have almost 90,000 poker machines – through which punters lost $9.3 billion last year – Labor learnt a lesson from the 2023 election when Perrottet staked so much personal capital on the issue, and still lost. It is not a vote changer.
Why risk poking that bear on the approach to the March 2027 state election, in which it would require some calamity to deprive Labor of a second term? It’s likely to win with an increased majority.
That’s not to say Labor members do not care about pokies. The voices of people like Morey and Byrne matter a great deal if those who wish for reform have any hope of pushing the government further.
We will land somewhere on poker machines before the election. The government probably won’t commit to a cashless regime, but it has been working with stakeholders, including Clubs NSW, on reforms that will include the rollout of facial-recognition technology (ironic given part of the lobby’s backlash to cashless gaming was a Big Brother scare campaign that it would “empower government bureaucrats to monitor your spending”). The Coalition is still working out what its policy will be, but may end up somewhere similar.
In the meantime, the premier remains sorry.
Michael McGowan is state political editor.
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