Stronger public health approach to reducing harm across all demographics

Consider transferring oversight of the Gambling Harm reduction fund to ACT Health to manage and disburse to organisations without an inherent conflict of interest (e.g. those which do not have any gambling revenue).  The purpose of the Fund should be resourcing research into harm reduction and evidence-based treatment programs across all forms of gambling.

Government support for club diversification to drive reduction in EGM licenses

Implement a proactive strategy to help community clubs diversify their income and reduce their reliance on EGM (poker machine) revenue. However, to ensure these policies actually reduce community harm from gambling, any government grants, subsidies, lease variation waivers or other mechanisms provided to clubs must be offset by an overall reduction in EGM licenses.  The target should be a reduction of EGM licenses from 3500 to 2000 in the next term of government.  This target would put the ACT on track to match the best performing State in terms of EGMs per capita.

Implement Australia’s safest carded gaming, ensuring gambling venues take responsibility for protecting vulnerable people.

Begin phased introduction of carded gaming for all large venues which includes best-practice consumer protections.  Facilitated by a central monitoring system, this should include:

• daily and monthly betting caps;
• mandatory pre-commitment in all venues;
• break after every hour of play;
• EGMs to spin at a rate of three seconds per game.