Tasmania's peak social services organisation fears poker machines will be made harder to regulate and harm minimisation measures will be ineffective after the reforms passed the lower house with Labor's support.
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After 23 hours of debate and at 11pm on Wednesday, the legislation passed the House of Assembly with only Greens MHAs Cassy O'Connor and Rosalie Woodruff, and independent Kristie Johnston, voting against.
They hoped the upper house would at least send the legislation to an inquiry to investigate its impacts, but a major party majority meant that could be unlikely.
The government and Labor added an amendment to have the Liquor and Gaming Commission investigate facial recognition and pre-commitment technology by mid-2022, but rejected attempts to broaden the scope to include all harm minimisation measures like slower spin speeds and lower maximum bets.
There was no requirement for the government to adopt the measures after the commission's review, with no other Australian jurisdictions fully adopting them.
The legislation also removes the power of the Parliament to vote on new casino licenses, but breaks up Federal Group's monopoly model on pokies licenses with a significant tax cuts for its two casinos.
TasCOSS chief executive officer Adrienne Picone said it was a disappointing outcome.
"Poker machines are a dangerous product. This legislation does nothing to make them less dangerous and in fact could well result in more Tasmanians losing their money to poker machines," she said.
"If the Tasmanian Government is serious about being 'nation-leading' in the area of harm minimisation, it will not restrict the Liquor and Gaming Commission's work on this to only industry-approved measures.
"The commission must consider measures that have already been shown to successfully minimise player losses, and therefore harm.
"We're concerned that the proposed legislation will make it harder to regulate pokies, meaning more Tasmanians will experience harm."
Greens leader Cassy O'Connor said it was "completely crushing" to see the government and Labor repeatedly vote to prevent further harm minimisation measures from being considered.
Braddon Labor MHA Shane Broad said the Greens and Ms Johnston were "grandstanding" on the issue and that Labor had ensured that at least some harm minimisation was being considered, after the government's initial bill had no new harm minimisation measures.
Bass Labor MHA Michelle O'Byrne said the party had to consider the outcome of the 2018 election and that the community "wants there to be an ability for people to have personal choice and gaming".
Finance Minister Michael Ferguson said the legislation provided "certainty and security for jobs in pubs and clubs". During the debate, he acknowledged that some forms of gambling "are designed to get people addicted", and the "science and the evidence is unmistakable".
Tasmania has the "most regressive" distribution of poker machines in Australia, with them overwhelmingly clustered in the state's most disadvantaged areas.
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