A trial of cashless pokies in Victorian pubs and clubs has been rejected by reform advocates who accuse the Allan government of breaking its promise to stop problem gamblers chasing their losses.
The Alliance for Gambling Reform, headed by anti-pokies campaigner Tim Costello, has dumped its support for a trial of carded-play technology at 43 suburban venues beginning next month after the government quietly shelved its commitment to include mandatory loss limits.
Tim Costello, head of the Alliance for Gambling Reform.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The City of Monash, one of three local government areas where venues are part of the trial, has written to the state government raising its concerns, and the City of Greater Dandenong will debate on Monday a motion by one of its councillors to withdraw its support.
Costello said there was no point trialling cashless technology, which is already used on electronic gaming machines at Melbourne’s Crown casino, if the mandatory setting of loss limits by punters was not part of the scheme.
“This technology has been implemented at Crown for over 18 months,” he said. “There is no need for a trial and, certainly, it is a complete waste of time to have a trial where the pre-commitment feature that could cap your losses is not mandatory.”
Costello said the alliance had supported the trial but now doubted the government’s commitment to protecting problem gamblers. He said cashless play would reduce money laundering through electronic gaming machines but do nothing to help gambling addicts.
“It became clear they weren’t trialling mandatory limits,” Costello said. “Instead, it is opt-in – like having opt-in brakes on a car. We fear that the true motivation of this trial is to kick it into the long grass.”
In NSW, a 2024 voluntary trial of cashless gaming at licensed clubs was taken up by only a tiny number of users, prompting the Australian Hotels Association to describe the experiment as “embarrassing and not credible”.
Monash Mayor Paul Klisaris said the Victorian trial was a positive step, but the council wanted mandatory loss limits included.
“Our preference is for mandatory and binding loss limits to be a feature of the trial, and we have written to the Victorian government’s Department of Justice and Community Safety to outline this,” he said.
When the Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Enver Erdogan, issued a press release with details of the three-month trial on July 21, he announced that “people gambling at these venues will need to use a YourPlay card to play electronic gaming machines and set loss limits.”
Punters sunk $266.5 million into Victoria’s gaming machines last month.Credit: Jason South
That statement was changed the following day to read: “People gambling at these venues will need to use a YourPlay card to play electronic gaming machines and can set loss limits.”
The trial will be run in Monash, Greater Dandenong and Ballarat. Gamblers in those three local government areas lost a combined $30.4 million in the month of July. The government has privately told reform advocates the discrepancy was an honest mistake in drafting and it never intended mandatory pre-commitment to be part of the trial.
Greater Dandenong councillor Rhonda Garad, who will on Monday move for her council to withdraw its support for the trial, said the government had been deceptive in its approach.
“We signed up to one thing, which was a mandatory pre-commitment trial,” she said. “Somehow, after the media release by the minister, mandatory pre-commitment was not part of the trial. It looks to me like the gambling industry gave someone a phone call.”
Her motion is for the council to immediately withdraw its support for the “altered trial” and urge the government to “reaffirm its commitment to substantive harm-minimisation reform”. The Labor-dominated council is unlikely to support the motion.
The government amended gaming laws this year to slow the “spin rate” of new gaming machines and limit the amount of money that can be withdrawn from ATMs inside venues. Crown casino’s more than 3000 electronic gaming machines (EGMs) have been cashless and subject to mandatory loss limits since December 2023 following the damning findings of a royal commission into the casino’s operations and licence.
Despite these changes, the government has revised upwards the revenue it expects to generate from pokies. Between the May 2024 and May 2025 state budgets, it increased by $767 million its forecast tax from EGMs between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2028.
According to government figures, punters lost a record $3.14 billion on the pokies in Victoria in 2024-25, with July’s monthly figure of $287 million also a record.
Former premier Daniel Andrews, in one of his last major policy announcements, promised sweeping reforms to reduce gambling harm including carded play and mandatory pre-commitment limits on all EGMs in Victoria.
In November last year, when the government introduced legislation to support its proposed reforms, the minister then responsible, Melissa Horne, set out a time frame to make all pokies cashless by the end of this year and loss limits mandatory by the end of 2027.
The following month, Horne was replaced by Erdogan in a ministerial reshuffle. Since then, Premier Jacinta Allan has faced growing disquiet from inside caucus and among gambling reform advocates about her government’s commitment to protect problem gamblers.
Erdogan did not respond to questions from this masthead. A government spokesperson said the reforms would prevent gambling harm around the state. “We’ve always said this would be a phased approach to ensure we get implementation right and bring industry along with us,” the spokesperson said. “This trial is an important step.”
The Productivity Commission first recommended in 1999 that mandatory loss limits be included on all EGMs and reiterated its position in 2010.
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