Opposition parties in New South Wales dead set against new gaming law as it could sabotage the casino market

It seems the opposition parties in the Australian state of New South Wales are dead set against new gaming law. In the perspective of the opposition parties new legislation addressing slot machines could sabotage the casino market as it could escalate the number of machines in high-risk areas increasing the gaming industry profits by A$80 million (US$62.9 million) a year.

In view of this, Tim Costello, the Director of the Alliance for Gaming Reform, said the laws should be outright rejected: “This legislation is a disgrace and it looks like it was written by Clubs NSW. We need to instead look at Labor’s proposal to remove pokies from all pubs and clubs in Tasmania, the appalling industry response effectively buying the Tasmanian election and how we can start treating the gambling industry like the tobacco industry.”

“The NSW government has no specific mandate to amend 16 different pieces of legislation like this and should delay the whole process until after the 2019 NSW election, so the community can have a say on whether NSW should continue on as the most pokies-soaked jurisdiction in the world, with the exception of Las Vegas and Macau,” said Costello. “Rather than rushing through legislation which has clearly been heavily influenced by Clubs NSW, we need a parliamentary inquiry into how NSW residents have become the most gambling-harmed community in the world, and after that we need an official government apology to the hundreds of thousands of people who have been harmed over the decades by increasingly sophisticated and addictive poker machines.”

The New South Wales government commissioned a review that recommended that the mandatory probe that casino licensees must go through in order to review the activities should be abolished. The change would overturn the investigations conducted once every five years.