Hansard debates

Dr RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (10:04:34) — Yesterday this Parliament voted against a long-overdue inquiry into Victoria's gambling regulator. The majority in this house once again said, 'We deny the problem, we refuse to listen to the evidence and we are prepared to keep the status quo', a status quo that causes harm to an untold number of lives in which pokies are causing havoc. That decision happened on a day when the Tasmanian Labor Party vowed to, as Michael Koziol from the Sydney Morning Herald observed, become the first state to blow up the pokies. In a courageous move they plan to remove poker machines from non-casino venues over the next five years. And do you know how they arrived at this decision? A parliamentary inquiry. This inquiry revealed such great losses from the Tasmanian community, and they knew they had to act.

Australia is home to 76 per cent of the world's poker machines in non-casino venues. Let us take a moment for that to sink in a bit. We have 0.32 per cent of the world's population, and we have 76 per cent of the world's poker machines. Can anyone honestly believe that we do not have a problem? We have 200 000 poker machines, which represents more per person than any other country, excluding specific gambling destinations. In Victoria we lose $2.5 billion a year on the pokies. That is money that should and could be going back into communities. Australia, we have a problem; Victoria, we have a problem. How many more people's lives have to be ruined by this scourge before this Parliament will act? Let us hope that when the majority in this Parliament decide to pluck up the courage it is not too late.