Punters at Melbourne’s Crown Casino will be forced to pre-commit to losses and time spent on poker machines as part of reforms introduced in the wake of damning royal commission findings.
Key points:
- The Victorian Government has introduced laws requiring people to fix a limit on their pokie losses at Crown Melbourne
- An advocate says the measures should apply to all the state’s pokie venues
- A suite of other measures aim to combat money laundering
The 12 measures are the latest from 33 recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence, which found an “alarming catalog of wrongdoing” at Victoria’s only casino.
The Melbourne casino — Victoria’s largest single-site employer — has been able to hold onto its license as long as it meets a number of conditions, including implementing the reforms.
US firm Blackstone recently completed an $8.9 billion takeover of Crown’s operations in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.
Under the legislation being introduced in Victoria today, all Australian residents at the casino must set a maximum limit on how much they are prepared to lose before they begin using pokies.
“This is a world-first in a suite of reforms,” Gaming Minister Melissa Horne said.
Technology to enforce the limit and track the time and money spent does not yet exist.
The government will give the Crown until the end of 2023 to have the mandatory pre-commitments in place, with the minister saying “it needs to be fully rolled out by no later than the end of 2025”.
The limit will be entirely up to the pattern.
Calls for pre-commitments to apply statewide
Chief Advocate at the Alliance for Gambling Reform Tim Costello welcomed the news.
“This is a really a historic day for the state government and therefore the people of Victoria — winning back power over the Crown, that has completely dominated the landscape and dominated the terms of engagement,” he said.
He said he believed the pre-commitment system should apply to all pokie venues in the state.
“You can link the same system for pre-commitment to all pokies through clubs and hotels in Victoria so simply … the greedy pubs and clubs with pokies have fought this for more than a decade,” he said.
Crown Melbourne has about 2,600 pokie machines, about 10 per cent of the 26,321 spread across the state. Government statistics show more than $1.5 billion is lost on the pokies across the state each year.
When asked whether the limits were likely to be enforced at other gaming venues, Ms Horne said the government was focused on implementing the recommendations of the royal commission.
The minister said there was not a dollar figure or modeling attached to the mandatory pre-commitments to show how much better off patrons would be under the measure.
Other measures to tackle ‘money-laundering activities’
Repeated breaches of money-laundering rules and links to organized crime were identified at the royal commission.
Under the new measures, the use of cash will be limited to $1,000 per 24 hours in a bid to crack down on money laundering.
The legislation will make it mandatory for patrons to use casino-issued cards and identification to gamble or receive winnings of more than $1,000.
“Again, this is a first for Crown Casino. And it is aimed directly at tackling money-laundering activities,” Ms Horne said.
It builds on measures introduced earlier which direct Crown to only hold a single bank account for patrons to deposit funds.
Other new rules include making Crown pay for the cost of regulating the casino, which the minister said was “only reasonable that for the additional level of scrutiny that Crown requires, they should also be able to pay for that”.
Any person or business wanting to own more than 5 per cent of the casino operator or its holding company will require the approval of the state’s new gambling watchdog.
Crown has been contacted for comment.
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