The legislation that would make carded play mandatory on all electronic gaming machines in Victoria was passed through parliament on Monday.
The Gambling Legislation Amendment (Pre-commitment and Carded Play) Bill 2024 has been sent to the Legislative Council after passing the Legislative Assembly 53 votes to 25.
In her second reading speech, Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation Melissa Horne outlined the proposed legislation gives the government the power to set requirements for carded play on gaming machines in hotels and clubs.
“Carded play is a relatively simple concept – it means that a player card must be inserted into an electronic gaming machine for it to operate,” she said.
“This establishes the means to enable patrons to make better informed choices about their spending.”
As a first step, Horne said three-month trial of carded play will be carried out at approximately 40 venues in mid-2025, before it’s rolled out across the state by end of 2025.
However, Gippsland South MP Danny O’Brien said he was concerned the bill doesn’t introduce the mandatory carded play in full, it only establishes a framework.
“The government is basically giving itself a head of power to introduce these reforms rather than giving the Parliament the opportunity to understand exactly what it is going to do and in what timeframe it is going to do it,” he said.
“I acknowledge the timeframe is listed in the second-reading speech, but we are already somewhat behind that timeframe given that the bill was introduced in November. Here we are in the middle of March, and we are only just beginning now.”
As part of the new Bill, any new gaming machines approved by the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission after 1 December 2025 must have a spin rate of at least three seconds per game, slowing games down by 40 per cent. The current gaming machine spin rate in Victoria is 2.14 seconds.
The move to introduce carded play to clubs and pubs follows the government’s mandate for Crown Melbourne to introduce carded play across all table games at the casino by December 2025.
Previously, Community Clubs Victoria CEO Andrew Lloyd voiced support for the intent of the changes but raised concerns about the lack of data from Crown Melbourne’s implementation and the feasibility of a statewide rollout.
“Where is the evaluation data? From a project management perspective, you need to undertake an evaluation and ask: ‘Is Crown successful? Has it eradicated laundering? Has it addressed minimisation?’ before you continue trotting that out for hotels and clubs. So far, we haven’t seen any of that evaluation data, which is what needs to occur,” he said.
Lloyd also questioned the practicality of implementing the technology across the state.
“The Crown implementation is just in one building. What we’re talking about is a wide-area network of hundreds of venues across the state. To my knowledge, that has not been done anywhere else in the world,” he said.
“You’d need to have a massive IT project team put this together with some pretty high-level companies informing the build of it. That’s hasn’t been put together, so we’re very concerned with the way the project is being rushed.”
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Once upon a time in Australia people were able to make their own decisions and not have their lives regulated by government. What’s next?