I too rise to speak on the Casino and Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. This bill, yet again, builds upon our government’s efforts to make gaming in Victoria safer and more responsible for all Victorians. I have had the chance to speak quite a lot about these sorts of reforms in this place over the last couple of years, and what we know is that when it comes to gambling losses it is communities like mine in the western suburbs – suburbs that suffer from systemic economic disadvantage generation upon generation – that end up sustaining the greatest losses, sadly. We know that through the data and the statistics that are collected. It is communities like mine that are some of the hardest hit, and they lose hundreds of millions of dollars each and every single year, and that is really into poker machines.

In the last financial year, Victorians collectively lost over $7.3 billion to all different types of gambling. More than half of this was through pokie machines and of course at the casino. The Crown Casino alone accounted for $957 million in gambling losses over this period. It does not please me to say at all that the City of Brimbank, which I represent, tops the list when it comes to gambling losses, accounting for more than $175 million in losses. That is an appalling amount of money. As I said, suburbs and neighbourhoods, streets with some of the most economically disadvantaged people here in Victoria – $170 million a year in losses. In the July that has just passed, Brimbank lost – this is just July – $16.5 million in just one month. Can you believe that? $16.5 million in one month.

As someone who likes to build stuff in their electorate – and we need to build a lot of stuff – I think about what that $16.5 million could have gone towards, and I can tell you: a hell of a lot of things. This is something that greatly concerns me and my community as a local member, and I applaud the advocacy of Brimbank City Council in sticking up for locals and being a champion of gambling reform. When I was chairing the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee when we held our inquiry into the gambling and liquor regulations, I recall having the public hearings and hearing from so many services and operators, people on the front line that are having to counsel and support problem gamblers, and the stories that they can tell you about what is happening with these families, with gambling addiction at the centre of it, are absolutely appalling. It is a disgusting scourge on our local communities.

I went ahead and visited with I think the Minister for Mental Health and, at one stage, gambling and liquor regulation on another occasion in Sunshine, meeting with the services that deal locally with folks in Brimbank and in the greater western suburbs that are struggling with gambling addictions and provide that kind of support to those locals and also, most importantly, to their families. As I said, this is a scourge on our local community, and the devastation that the family unit suffers when one of their loved ones has a gambling problem or is a gambling addict is absolutely appalling – and it is a lifelong addiction. These are real issues, and to no-one’s surprise, these issues are multifaceted and involve social, economic and mental issues.

We have known that we need major changes in our gaming industry for a long time, especially when it comes to Crown Casino. It is why our government committed to the Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence and then accepted and agreed to deliver on all 33 recommendations. It is why we committed to cleaning up our pokies venues, including uniform closing periods, mandatory precommitment and slowing the spin rates of many new gaming machines.

It should be clear that while we accept – and I do accept; I have talked here in this place about how my Nanna Jean, who has been passed away now almost the past decade, loved going and having a punt on the pokies. She loved it. She used to go down to the local bowling club on pension day. She was a not a very wealthy lady whatsoever. She was also deaf; she went deaf at 50, which was incredibly isolating for her. But she loved the pokies, and I think she used to bet 5-cent pieces that would go in. This woman had nothing, but with the cheap meal she would go down, and she enjoyed doing that. It was part of her social interaction as she struggled with going deaf at 50.

But I will say that it is really important to minimise the risk of vulnerable people – because it is not all people – taking it too far and losing hundreds, if not thousands or even tens of thousands, of dollars on a night at the pokies. If left unfettered, irresponsible gambling can destroy lives, and that is something I have heard directly from, as I have said, many of the agencies that service my community, and there are many, many services across Melbourne’s west, because some of the hardest hit parts in Victoria are in our local neighbourhoods.

Today’s bill in particular relates to Crown Casino. It builds upon that commitment to implementing those 33 recommendations. We have made sure that Crown obeys some very, very strict gambling settings – and I think it should have always been this way – including mandatory carded play on all EGMs and, as of this year, electronic tables. It is interesting, because I do not think I have ever set foot inside the gambling component of Crown Casino, so I am not quite sure what an electronic table consists of or would even look like. When I think of gambling, it is always the pokie machines, because Nanna used to like us to go down there and spend time with her, but she would be playing on the machines.

But we have implemented binding precommitment limits on all EGMs at Crown Casino so that players can, most importantly, manage their gambling and avoid taking it too far. We have reduced load limits from $2000 to $1000 at the casino so that players cannot just load up a large amount of money at once into one machine. We have also limited the amount of hours a person can play – I always find this absolutely extraordinary, how long some people can sit at these machines. We have limited the amount of hours without a break to 3 hours – that is still a really long time. You think about sitting on your phone for 3 hours – that is a really long time. That is longer than they are making Hollywood movies nowadays. I think the last 3-hour movie that I watched was probably on the weekend with the kids, and that was The Lord of the Rings. The breaks are now at 3 hours, and there are no more than 12 ‍hours in a day and no more than 36 hours in a week.

What this bill does is build upon the changes that we have made. It also goes ahead and strengthens them. The bill does so by empowering the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission with stronger watchdog powers to, really importantly, hold Crown Casino to account. The bill will increase penalties for noncompliance with a direction from the regulator. Currently that penalty is a one-off $10,000 fine, but these changes mean it will now be a daily penalty of $1 million until compliance is achieved, and I think that is a much clearer, much more realistic penalty for noncompliance. What we are doing through this penalty – the change in penalty units and the amount of money that Crown can be hit with – is we are making it very, very clear that when it comes to implementing these changes, Crown cannot drag its feet. This bill is going to go further than just regulating Crown Casino itself, it is going to extend the regulator’s scope to include all of Crown’s corporate associates.

This is a really important bill. I have talked about the amount of harm that gambling causes just in Brimbank alone, and I represent Hobsons Bay, Brimbank, Maribyrnong and Wyndham. I have four of the best or worst LGAs in Melbourne’s west, and each one of those LGAs has gambling losses in the millions – it just is absolutely extraordinary, as I have said. The Laverton electorate takes in some of the most vulnerable suburbs here in Victoria. 2017 was the last time that we lifted the cap in relation to the maximum number of entities that a single club operator can hold, and I imagine there will be a lot of clubs and a lot of RSLs and venues who want to phase out gambling machines but cannot afford to do so, and we do want to see that. I commend the bill to the house.