Wednesday, 14 August 2024

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

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

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:43): I rise to speak on a committee report which I have already spoken on in this place. It is the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s Gambling and Liquor Regulation in Victoria: A Follow up of Three Auditor-General Reports. This was a most illuminating report and an inquiry I sat on in the last year. Along with other PAEC members, I know I certainly learned a lot. It was a particularly timely report for us to be doing, because it came directly in the wake of the government’s announcement of much more stringent regulations around poker machines across suburban Melbourne and regional Victoria, including, amongst other things, most notably, the introduction of a statewide prohibition on electronic gaming machine operations between 4 am and 10 am. We heard extensively from experts at this inquiry about how this was actually very important because you would see trends across pockets in both metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria where you would actually have the various different gambling operators and pokie operators coordinating their mandated shutdown period so that it would be possible for someone to go from venue to venue to venue. I know that Minister Melissa Horne has been working extensively on these reforms. It was very good to see that very fast, very direct feedback from the community and also from those stakeholders who are so invested in this space, and to see that that response was indeed overwhelmingly positive.

We also heard about the impacts of gambling harm. I have spoken before in this place about the youth round table that we conducted in the Parliament, with a mock debate in the Assembly chamber, and how we heard directly from young people and their experiences with gambling. Pokie machines and things that come under state regulation were quite naturally a large focus of our report. I am still struck by a young man Fred, who incurred a six-figure loss when he was barely 20 on online sports gambling. We know that anyone who turned on the TV, anyone who would have seen our wonderful athletes in the Olympics these past few weeks and seen the incredible dance moves of Raygun or anything else at the Olympics, would no doubt have also seen lots and lots and lots of gambling ads.

One recurring thing we also heard across the board from witnesses who appeared in front of our committee. I made a habit of asking them a particular question. The reason I asked this question was because it came in the wake of a very, very significant landmark federal committee report. That is of course the report titled You Win Some, You Lose More – much better known, though, as the Murphy report. It was chaired by the late, great, incredible Peta Murphy, a colleague from our side, who we still greatly, greatly miss – the former member for Dunkley. Her legacy in that You Win Some, You Lose More report was profound and significant. The central recommendation of that report was for a phase-out of the extreme amount of gambling advertising that we are seeing online, on TV and in various other media. The question I would ask witnesses would be quite simply: ‘In reference to that recommendation do you support what the Murphy report calls for?’ The response was as emphatic as it was unanimous: yes.

It is now some time since the Murphy report was tabled, and I am very pleased to say that of the many recommendations of our report from PAEC, one of them, recommendation 10, called for the Victorian government to actively urge the federal government to implement that recommendation of the Murphy report. I am very pleased that we now have the full response from the government of Victoria to our report, in which that recommendation, recommendation 10, is supported in full. There are many conversations, I am sure, that are still to be had at the federal level, but I think it is timely for us to reflect on what has been a very significant contribution not just to our federal Parliament but the whole nation through this landmark Murphy report. It is high time that the Murphy report becomes Murphy’s law.