Australia has always had its share of contradictions.
In 1904, poet Dorothea Mackellar wrote her best-known verse My Country, describing Australia as “a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.” It’s ironic then that contradictions remain at Australia’s heart, particularly in view of the current politics around gaming.
At the last General Election in August 2010, the result was a minority government relying on a handful of Independent members. Those MPs, of course, milked the situation all they could for benefits they otherwise would never have realised.
One of them, Andrew Wilkie, received the third highest number of votes in his electorate but (thanks to the British immigrants and their Westminster system of government – otherwise known as the ‘Yes Minister’ system of government) was installed as the Member for Denison. He cut a deal with the Prime Minister, requiring that all gaming machines nationwide would have to be equipped with a means for players to limit their spending by 2014.
Never mind that this would cost billions to implement. Never mind that 140,000 jobs would probably vanish. Never mind that annual government revenue from gaming machines totalling $5bn would be at risk. Never mind that players would be able to set very high limits.
Then in January 2012, the Prime Minister said there wasn’t enough support for that to pass through Parliament’s lower house, so she proposed a field trial enshrined in another piece of legislation – which has not yet been tabled in Parliament, so it probably doesn’t have enough support to pass either. Andrew Wilkie was most unhappy, said he’d been ‘dudded’ and that he wouldn’t support the government’s ‘watered down’ bill.
And then there’s Parliament’s upper house. Senator Nick Xenophon, a gaming machine abolitionist, was elected in South Australia five years ago. He and the Greens have said they won’t support the government’s ‘watered down’ bill either (which was a backflip from their previous position), because they’d rather limit the maximum bet to $1.
Never mind that this would cost billions to implement unless it was completed over many years. Never mind that a player could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year at a $1 maximum bet. Never mind… etc, etc.
So now we have a bill in the upper house proposing a $1 maximum bet and another bill, which is not yet in the lower house proposing a nationwide expenditure limit system. Goodness knows what happens next – but the next general election is scheduled for late next year and at this stage, it seems likely there’ll be a change of government. Most people are hoping the result will be a majority government and the handful of independent members will hold a more appropriate status – silence!
This feature can be read in full in the July 2012 issue of InterGaming magazine.
