I too rise to speak on the Gambling Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, and I intend to speak about the bill and also about gambling addiction here in this state. The aim of this bill is to build on our government’s gambling reforms, with the focus of this piece of legislation being the framework for the gaming machine monitoring licence, as well as our public lottery licences, so that our government has the tools and, importantly, the flexibility it needs to regulate this framework now and into the future.

When it comes to gambling and casino reform in this country, our government, the Allan Labor government, has made leaps and strides in the past couple of years alone. This is not the first piece of legislation this term that deals with gambling legislation, and I imagine before November next year it will not be the last. I note that just earlier this year we debated another gambling bill that implemented several of our key reforms to the pokie sector, including – and I just thought this was so great; my community absolutely loved this – mandatory precommitment and carded play, as well as slower slot machines.

I am going to come very shortly to why this is really important, particularly in my local community. I also acknowledge that these came on top of the changes that came into effect last year surrounding opening times for pokie venues, ensuring that closing times are uniform so that gamers cannot move between venues to avoid a break.

All of these things were key recommendations to go ahead and reduce the impacts of gambling harm in our state. They were things that we did to protect folks here in this state who were unable to act to protect themselves, and this is something I know very well as a western suburbs member of Parliament. The western suburbs take a great deal of seriousness in addressing these kinds of issues. It is our people in the western suburbs that are hurt immensely through gambling addiction. We know what happens when gambling harm gets out of control. There have been amazing speeches here in this place on both sides of the chamber of experiences and of personal experiences – people, including me, also talking about family members that have had gambling addiction that has led to drug and alcohol abuse and family violence. We know that steps need to be taken to address the impact of gambling harm, to keep families from losing money or worse.

In Brimbank, which takes in Sunshine, Albion, Ardeer and Sunshine West in my electorate, gambling losses since July last year – get this; I still cannot believe this – amount to more than $103 million across those suburbs alone. The City of Wyndham ranks seventh, with $77 million in gambling losses. It is absolutely a good thing that we are doing everything we can to go ahead and tackle and ensure that our venues in these local communities like mine, where there is significant gambling harm that is caused and happens, are operating in a way that allows for people to game responsibly and minimise harm, because every excess dollar that we do not lose to gambling harm is going back to families and households to spend on essentials, to save for big life goals and dreams or even just to spend on a good night out.

This bill continues the great work to achieve this goal. What this bill does is turns its attention to the gambling machine monitoring licence framework. It is not a massive reform. It is not a change like the previous bills have been, but this is just as important in making sure that those reforms are enforced and complied with as they are intended to be. Currently Intralot Gaming Services have had the licence for operating the electronic monitoring systems on all Victorian pokie machines since 2011; all machines are legally required to be connected to this system in venues. This licence has a 15-year term, and it is set to expire in 2027. As part of this licence, they are also responsible for administering programs such as YourPlay to machines, which serves as our mandatory precommitment scheme. The first important change that this bill makes in respect to this is that it allows for the term of the licence to be specified in the licence agreement, replacing the current year 15 requirement. We are almost at the end of that 15-year period, and this change not only allows for the terms of the licence to continue after this period but allows the government greater control over how long the monitoring licences are granted for and, importantly, the conditions that are attached to them.

Another change in this bill will allow the government to require a premium payment for consideration for the monitoring licence. What that means is that when considering any future monitor for our pokie machines the licensing framework is going to provide a maximum efficiency for our monitoring licensee, which is now Intralot but could hypothetically not be at some point in the future. What this basically means is that we can go ahead and make the tools we currently have to enforce the gambling industry much more effective and much more efficient at not only doing the jobs that they are doing now but also doing more things as well.

A really good example of this is that the bill will allow for the monitoring licensee to be directed to other private regulator compliance systems and mechanisms, such as those to assist with preventing money laundering through alert systems, so that the venue operators that they oversee are aware of and are complying with their obligations under the legislation and our regulatory frameworks. Under this change, for example, Intralot or a future replacement would be able to run anti-money-laundering system alerts on our slot machines, which is really important. That means they will be able to pick up from machines if something seems dodgy, and they should pick it up pretty quickly, which in turn assists our authorities in tracking illegal activity.

More importantly, the bill is also going to allow for mandatory conditions of the licence agreement, such as the requirement to operate mandatory precommitment and other systems, to be established prior to the licensing agreement being entered into, and that means any gambling provider seeking to be granted a licence by our government will be aware in advance that they will have to include their operating activities under our gambling laws, which is going to mean less time adjusting and adapting to these systems once the licence commences. We know that this will mean greater certainty for the industry, especially our venues, to know that there will be a semblance of continuity in place should the licence change or be renewed.

In addition to all of this, the bill makes similar changes to the framework that governs our public lottery licensing. Here in Victoria this licence currently sits with Tattersall’s, who run a number of different lottery competitions that many of us in this house will know, including TattsLotto, Powerball and Oz Lotto. They have been around for some time. The changes to the licensing framework included in this bill include things like empowering the government to issue a long-term extension, which will make this framework consistent with other major gambling licences.

Yes, this bill is quite technical. It does not quite introduce the major reforms of previous gambling-related bills that we have put before this house and debated and, yes, passed, which are now law. But these changes are really important to ensure that the licences that our government issues to these companies – and it is a really big responsibility to operate key sections of our gambling industry – such as the monitoring licence for our poker machines or our lottery licence, are able to function better. Our reforms to the sector, including things like precommitment, do not work if the licensing frameworks that govern them and govern the companies that run these machines are not up to standard and up to what Victorians expect here in this state. That is why these changes not only reflect what we are trying to achieve, which is really important, but also give greater certainty and flexibility to these reforms so they last well after the current licences expire. I think that is really, really important. I am really pleased to see this bill come before the house this evening, and that is exactly why I wholeheartedly commend it to the house.