“The minister’s focus is for an ‘independent inquiry into the future of the ACT clubs industry’, rather than specifically addressing harms caused by poker machines,” writes political columnist MICHAEL MOORE.

It’s time to pay attention when former Liberal Prime Ministers John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull join forces.

And then combine them with Labor heavyweights such as the former premier of Victoria Steve Bracks and federal minister Robert Tickner.

It is even more significant when federal and ACT politicians arm wrestle over the same issue.

In August, an open letter calling for an end to gambling advertising was organised by the Alliance for Gambling Reform and signed by those and other well-known former politicians and community leaders.

The letter voiced a wide range of concerns regarding gambling including, “$25 billion in annual losses – (gambling) is escalating devastating social harm including financial loss, health and mental health issues, partner violence, family break-up and suicide”.

The prime focus was on the way the gambling industry targetted advertising campaigns at adolescents. The open letter argued from “strong evidence that gambling companies are now grooming our kids by targetting children as young as 14 through social media”. 

However, the spotlight was regarding free-to-air advertising in Australia as being “out of control with one million gambling ads being aired on free-to-air television and radio in just one year”.

The aim of the open letter was to seek federal government intervention. However, there is also a showdown in the ACT with Labor and The Greens making claims about who is more effective at reducing the number of poker machines. 

Minister for Gaming Reform, and former anti-gambling advocate, Dr Marisa Paterson, has announced a tender to conduct an inquiry as “the next step toward reducing the number of poker machines in the ACT to 1000 by 2045”. 

She argues that a key part of reducing the harm from pokies “is supporting the club sector to move away from reliance on gambling revenue, so the industry can become more sustainable and continue to thrive in ways that benefit the entire community.”

The Greens’ Shane Rattenbury, a former gaming minister, will have none of it. 

Mr Rattenbury argues that the current Labor government has slowed the poker machine “reduction rate by over 40 per cent”. 

The nub of the argument is that the reduction rate in the seven years between 2018 and 2025 was 214 a year at a time when the Greens had stewardship of the portfolio. Dr Paterson’s proposal to reduce to 1000 machines by 2045 “will see the rate of reduction fall to 125 per year”.

The challenge for Dr Paterson is how to handle this issue, to which she has been personally committed from long before she entered politics. Labor has relied on pokies for its perennial source of funding – no matter how well the money has been filtered. 

Her focus is for an “independent inquiry into the future of the ACT clubs industry”, rather than specifically addressing harms caused by poker machines.

There are no terms of reference. At best it is more like a call for expressions of interest looking at “practical options, timeframes and measures to support the club industry, its workforce and other stakeholders during the transition”. 

With the focus on the industry, Dr Paterson has suggested the terms of reference might include:

• Possible changes to regulatory or tax settings to support the establishment of alternative revenue streams for clubs.

• Skills and training requirements for club sector workers to support repositioned industry activity or workforce transitions. 

• Future uses of club-owned land to provide community benefits, including affordable housing, aged care and supported accommodation.

Gambling policy is fraught with challenges for political parties as they come under enormous pressure from the gambling industry and those it financially supports in the media and sports.

The Public Health Association of Australia has suggested a solution for incoming federal MPs. They have called for a bi-partisan approach that adopts a percentage of the revenue raised by gambling companies to be spent on supporting media and sports. The approach calls for a “comprehensive ban on gambling advertising” and at the same time imposing “a 1 per cent levy on gambling companies’ gross revenue”.

The revenue from the levy could then be distributed “among the media and the sporting codes, for the next three years, during the transition to an Australia without gambling advertising revenue”. 

It is a similar approach to the one used to wean sporting codes away from the support of tobacco companies nearly half a century ago.

There are challenges for politicians in dealing with the harms associated with gambling, but such challenges are not insurmountable. They pale into insignificance against the challenges for those affected by all forms of gambling.

Michael Moore is a former member of the ACT Legislative Assembly and an independent minister for health. He has been a political columnist with “CityNews” since 2006.