The ACT needs to go all in on cashless gambling now

The move would be groundbreaking, representing a major blow to a predatory gambling industry that costs Australians more than $27 billion in losses every year - more per capita than any other country on the planet.

ACT Greens Minister for Gaming Shane Rattenbury has been working with stakeholders like us to explore the possibility of cashless gaming in the ACT, and how cashless gaming paired with mandatory spending or loss limits can be a powerful tool to mitigate harm caused by gaming.

And now a public inquiry has been launched by the ACT Legislative Assembly standing committee on justice and community safety into cashless gambling technology in the ACT.

It seeks to investigate: the technology, the experiences in other jurisdictions, the extent of money laundering in ACT and how a card could disrupt organised crime and reduce gambling harm.

On the surface, this sounds like a step in the right direction. But the reality is that we have an avalanche of evidence on how a mandatory, pre-commitment cashless card can work incredibly well to reduce gambling harm and disrupt organised crime and money laundering.

We also have ample evidence of Claytons cashless cards, aggressively promoted by the industry, that don't have the essential elements to make them work. And of course, we have a long history of the industry seeking to delay, delay, delay implementation of a genuine mandatory, pre-commitment cashless card.

One of the aces of the gambling lobby is to push for an inquiry. In NSW, Chris Minns, caved to industry pressure and launched an unnecessary, flawed and bumbling inquiry into a cashless card. The ACT is now threatening to go down the same doomed path.

The latest data from the ACT shows that poker machine losses for the nine months up to the end of March this year totalled a staggering $142 million. Getting a mandatory, pre-commitment card right and getting it implemented as quickly as possible is imperative.

The shift to cashless gambling appears inevitable, given the rapidly increasing move across the Australian economy from cash to digital transactions. It is vital that governments actively manage this shift in such a way that harms from gambling are reduced, rather than increased.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform advocates for a mandatory, cashless registered gambling card with mandatory pre-commitment which is binding and has reasonable default limits.

Cashless gambling without robust harm minimisation features has the potential to cause greater harm due to the frictionless nature of being cash-free.

The evidence is clear: approaches relying on voluntary or anonymous gambling cards are self-defeating. They simply do not achieve the aims of minimising and preventing gambling harm and addressing criminal activity.

It is imperative that a carded system have mandatory pre-commitment with binding and reasonable default limits.

Tasmania is set to have all its electronic gambling machines converted to a cashless gambling system with mandatory pre-commitment and default limits of $5000 a year, $500 a month and $100 a day by November 2024.

These default limits are strongly supported by the Alliance and can be increased with proof of income if required. Without default limits it is possible people may set loss limits at very high amounts.

For example, in Victoria, the voluntary pre-commitment system YourPlay evaluation found daily spending limits of more than $1 million are common.

Crown Casino in Victoria will be launching a mandatory pre-commitment card in December 2023. It follows the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator Licence that found that a full, mandatory, pre-commitment system at the Melbourne Casino would significantly reduce the incidence of problem gambling.

Despite industry protests that such a system can't be implemented, in the case of Crown Casino in Melbourne this system will be in place a little over two years of the original recommendation being made.

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If executed and regulated well, a card-based cashless gambling system that is identity linked and has default limits will deter organised crime impacting clubs with poker machines. It would be very difficult for people to launder large quantities of money if these safeguards are in place which leads to protecting families and communities.

And as the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation and the NSW Crime Commission have made clear, such a system would be the gold standard for reducing gambling harm.

There may be benefits that emerge as a result of the ACT inquiry into cashless gambling cards, but it would be a tragedy if the inquiry was used by a powerful and rapacious industry to promote a card that will not help people harmed by gambling or one that has no impact on money laundering and facilitating organised crime.

The time to act is now, the damage gambling is doing in communities across the ACT is too grave to miss this historic moment for real reform.