One Last Spin by Drew Rooke

Author:Drew Rooke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: GAM004000, SEL041010, PSY038000, PSY009000, BUS070000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2018-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

For only the second time in the country’s history, the 2010 federal election resulted in a hung parliament. With neither major party securing a majority, it was left to the six crossbenchers to determine whether Labor’s Julia Gillard or the Coalition’s Tony Abbott would become prime minister. One of these crossbenchers was Andrew Wilkie.

Wilkie, the member for the Tasmanian seat of Denison, had run on a platform of poker machine reform. He was seriously underprepared for the frenzy of negotiations that followed the election. ‘To put it into perspective, I’m standing for Denison — one of the safest seats in the country for Labor,’ he tells me in his parliamentary office. ‘No one gave me any chance of winning. I thought I had a small chance, but it was such a long shot that I didn’t think it really would happen. Then, pretty much the night of the election, I’m standing there, elected to parliament. I’ve got no party, no office, no staff — nothing. I’m told, “Get on a plane to Canberra and start negotiations.” I was very naïve, and probably didn’t know what to expect. I certainly learned a lot very, very quickly, and the clubs turned out to be a nasty piece of work.’

In his negotiations with Gillard and Abbott, Wilkie said he would give his vote to whoever would implement nationwide the Productivity Commission’s two main recommendations — $1 maximum bets and mandatory pre-commitment.

Gillard offered Wilkie a compromise: Labor would implement mandatory pre-commitment, but not $1 maximum bets. Wilkie ultimately — and now, to his regret — agreed to Gillard’s compromise. With his support, plus that of other crossbenchers, Labor formed a minority government. It rested on a single vote of support.

The gambling industry went on the offensive immediately. Costing only $3.5 million from a supposed war chest of $20 million, its anti-reform campaign was spearheaded by ClubsNSW, who, as the representative of community clubs, was by far the most presentable anti-reform group compared to its allies — allies that included the AHA and ex-director of Crown Resorts, James Packer. The campaign labelled mandatory pre-commitment ‘Un-Australian’ and said it constituted a ‘licence to punt’. It also claimed that mandatory pre-commitment ‘Won’t Work Will Hurt’ Australia’s clubs, because it would cost $5 billion to implement.

According to economist Richard Denniss in a paper for the Australia Institute that was commissioned by a cohort of pro-reform organisations, this figure was ‘clearly fanciful’ and bore ‘no relationship to the policy proposals currently being considered by the government’. Denniss pointed out that the industry’s claim was based on a report that claimed the potential cost of pre-commitment was in the range of $400 million to $5 billion. He said the $5 billion estimate would be the cost if every poker machine in Australia was to be replaced the next day — which, of course, wasn’t what was being proposed. The figure, he said, ignored the phase-in provision suggested by the parliamentary committee, the depreciation of old poker machines already on the

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