WHILE Australians lose about $12 billion a year through their addiction to pokies, Prime Minister Julia Gillard stands to lose government with a major factor being Labor’s addiction to pokie profits.

The Prime Minister is now gambling with the same conflict of interest that has plagued ACT Labor for years. The close relationship of the Labor Party to poker machines simply compromises its independence.

There has to be a powerful force that could allow Gillard to distance herself from independent Andrew Wilkie, one of her key supporters, when her Government hangs by such slender threads.

What could possibly have influenced the Prime Minister enough for her to announce that she could no longer maintain the numbers to meet Wilkie’s demands for a system of pre-commitment for pokie users?

It is not just pokie profits going to Labor. There was the ongoing action of the clubs’ industry to defeat the move.

They have taken a page from the book by Mitch Hook and the mining industry of using large sums of money in campaigns to influence the Government.

There are a number of other influences. The Prime Minister’s own backbench would be concerned about the impact that restrictions on poker machines will have on the hospitality industry.

Backbenchers are being lobbied hard and will have even greater concerns about the impact that it might have on their own chances of re-election.

However, they seem to miss that a weakened Prime Minister who softens at the threat of community action is a much higher risk for them – as was the case when Kevin Rudd backed down from taxing the super profits of the mining industry.

Poker machines in the ACT put large sums of money into Labor Party coffers. The returns identified through Elections ACT suggest that ACT Labor benefits from its involvement with pokies to the tune of more than $500,000 a year.  In 2009-2010, the Labor Club alone donated over $660,000[i].

And plenty of that gets funnelled into Federal election campaigns!

It is ironic that this should happen at a time that a report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters recommends changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act, so that: “Donations to ‘related political parties’ should be treated as donations to the same political party for the purposes of disclosure requirements.

This will combat the practice of ‘donation splitting’ where donations under the threshold are made to each branch of a political party, which then could total in the tens of thousands, but go undisclosed”[ii].

Even more appalling is that the Prime Minister has announced a $38 million package to compensate ACT clubs for their participation in a trial of pre-commitment system.

A fair chunk of that will go into the clubs that make large donations to Labor. The conflict of interest is no longer a local issue – it is also one for the Prime Minister as taxpayers’ money feeds back into Labor coffers.

She will probably continue the approach of so many local Labor members of sticking their heads in the sand over this issue. Not one Labor member since self-government in 1989 has ever declared a conflict of interest in the ACT Legislative Assembly and stood aside on a vote regarding poker machines in the ACT.

There was an attempt about two and half years ago by then-Chief Minister Jon Stanhope to have ACT Labor to divest itself from this thorny conflict-of-interest situation by selling the Labor Club. The attempt was a failure with huge pressure being brought by Federal interests. Now it has come back to bite them.

The obvious thing for the Prime Minister to do regarding pre-commitment on pokies was to fight the good fight on the floor of the Parliament.  Andrew Wilkie would have had no choice but to accept the outcome of the Parliament.

By pre-empting the move she has cast a doubt over her own sincerity and has once again raised the spectre of Labor’s appalling conflict of interest regarding pokies.

Michael Moore was an independent member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (1989 to 2001) and was minister for health.

[i] ACT Labor Annual Return: www.elections.act.gov.au/resources/uploads/pdfs/returns_10/politicalparties/ALP.pdf
[ii] “Report on the funding of political parties and election campaigns”, Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, November 2011