The Abbott government is set to strip landmark gaming reforms meant to combat Australia’s world-leading gambling problem.
The government will move tomorrow to repeal landmark poker-machine reforms, acting with a speed that has left harm-minimisation campaigners including Reverend Tim Costello “shocked”.
Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews on Wednesday morning will put to a vote in the House of Representatives a bill repealing almost all of the harm-minimisation measures passed by the Gillard Labor government in November 2012.
“This is a straight capitulation to the power of the pokies lobby,” says Costello, chair of the Australian Churches’ Gambling Taskforce.
Among the measures that would be stripped away by the legislation are a requirement that by 2018 all new poker machines be capable of supporting a pre-commitment system, and another that ATM machines in gambling venues have a $250 daily withdrawal limit. So-called ‘pre-commitment’ technology allows gamblers to set how much money they plan to lose in a given session, locking out the player once the limit is reached.
The bill would also dismantle plans for a national gambling regulator, and remove the two levies on the gambling industry intended to fund it; scrap a requirement that warning messages flashed on poker machine screens be “dynamic”, to catch gamblers’ attention; and abolish the proposed trial of a mandatory pre-commitment scheme, which was to begin in the Australian Capital Territory this year.
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/the-house-wins-gaming-reforms-ditched/764/
And
What Tony Abbott said in response to a question from Independent Denison MP, Andrew Wilkie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaqRuT6B14I
People Before Pokies:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/156385424498080/
http://www.peoplebeforepokies.com/
