Imposing Community Degradation

Lost local control for government sponsored addiction sacrificing families in the process is the watchword for Australia. This duplicates the process of many US states and the BIA. Worth watching.

Poker machine regulator barely more than a rubber stamp
Anna Howard and Jessica Howard

At the pokies commission the deck is stacked against Victorian communities.

The Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation's decision last week to approve a new 65-poker machine venue in Castlemaine, despite unprecedented local opposition, exposed a political and legislative regime configured to deliver more pokies into the community, no matter the social cost.

In the past year the commission has heard 38 pokies applications. Just one was refused. From Swan Hill to Warragul and Horsham to Dandenong, the poker machine juggernaut rolls on, almost unchecked. Observers could be forgiven for thinking the regulator is just a rubber stamp.

In the rush to meet government deadlines for the issuing of gaming licences, proper process is compromised, and the integrity of the legislative regime impugned. For communities appearing at the commission, the process feels like a lottery - the only certainty being that they have Buckley's chance of winning.

The problems with the commission are manifold and render it ill-equipped to meet its primary task under the Gambling Regulation Act, to ''protect the community''.

The commission is not a court; its ''inquiries'' are not governed by the ordinary rules of evidence nor is it bound by its past decisions.

Commission decisions are not like court judgments that provide a detailed evidential basis for the decision reached; unsubstantiated conclusions seem commonplace. In the Castlemaine decision, the commission finds that the social character of the town won't be changed by a trebling of pokies, from 30 machines now to a total of 95. No facts are offered to support this significant conclusion; the commission relies instead on an assertion by the applicant that ''opposition to development proposals dissipates after the proposal occurs and the benefits materialise''.

It is almost impossible for a community to negate the silent presumption in the act that poker machine proposals should be approved. To begin with, the exercise requires a balancing of two impacts: economic and social. If the net economic and social impacts of a proposal are negative, the application must be refused. If, on balance, they are positive or even neutral (as it was in the Castlemaine decision), it must be approved.

In practice, the ''no net detriment'' test means that an applicant for a pokies venue can claim it will make significant investment improving a venue or building a shiny new one, which, in turn, will create new jobs, attract tourists and stimulate spending. Significant economic benefits are deemed to arise from almost every proposal before the commission. Simplistic costings put forward by applicants are not scrutinised.

The fact that the ''economic benefits'' will be paid for by losses on the pokies, much of which will come from problem gamblers, is ignored. Rich or poor, nearly all communities lose under the test applied at the commission. If yours is a poor community, the pokies will bring you great economic benefits that will outweigh their serious social costs. If yours is a wealthy community, you'll be able to absorb the negative social impacts that accompany an increase in pokies.

In the Castlemaine decision, the commission accepts that the high level of community opposition to the proposal for a trebling of pokies in the town would cause net social detriment, but this is not enough to refuse the application: ''If the community attitude to a proposal, as revealed by a survey, were the paramount consideration in all cases, it is almost inevitable that all applications for use of EGMs [pokies] would be refused.''

The commission knows what most of us believe: pokies are bad for communities and communities don't want more. In 2008, in the Romsey Hotel case, the Supreme Court held that no community is ''obliged to accept gaming machines''. The Castlemaine community said ''no'' louder than any other community before it; the commission process marginalised that voice.

The commission process is seriously flawed, and the governing legislative regime, deficient. It allows the state government to absolve itself of any political responsibility for decisions about pokies in Victoria.

It undermines the responsibility of local councils to promote the wellbeing of their community by giving them no power to act on this issue. It disempowers communities by removing from them the right to have a say, and be truly heard, on an issue that can impact on them well into the future.

Our society's addiction to poker machine revenue is one of the great moral dilemmas of our time. Daily our political institutions are proving themselves to be incapable of meeting this challenge.

Perhaps a proportion of pokies revenue should be provided to local governments to conduct plebiscites whenever pokies proposals are received. Letting communities - not bureaucrats, politicians or distant independent statutory bodies - decide on the matters that affect them is the only proper test.

But the government will never leave communities with the final say on pokies, because they know how communities feel about pokies. They're on a sure bet, so why change?

Anna Howard, a lawyer, and Jessica Howard, a former legal academic, made submissions on behalf of the people of Castlemaine at the commission hearing. (Since the CastlemaIne decision, the Commission's name has become the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation.)



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/poker-machine-regulator-barely-more-than-a-rubber-stamp-20120208-1rex0.html#ixzz1lt4lLLMf