Australian Gambling – When the Abbott Government, with the help of the opposition party, repealed poker machine reform laws last fortnight, Paul Bendat spent no time mourning the bill. The veteran lobbyist told Australiangambling he was only ever interested in laws that will actually make a difference to help problem gamblers. For more than six years, that’s what Bendat has been trying to do – make a difference.

When asked about poker machine reform, Bendat wanted to make one point very clear – he and the rest of the people fighting for gambling machine reform have no intention of getting rid of the machines. Their only wish is to reduce the harm they make.

“That is what pokies reform is all about – don’t believe the fear-mongering that pro-poker machine people will have you believe about us wanting to tear down every machine,” Bendat said. Bendat was a key figure behind the scenes and an advisor to Senator Nick Xenophon during the Gillard Government’s failed plan to tackle poker machine reform in 2010-11.

Like many at the time, Bendat urged the Government to act on a key recommendation from a 2010 Commonwealth Productivity Commission. This recommendation was bets be set at no more than $1 so that gamblers would not be able to lose more than $120 an hour. But, after some significant backpedaling from the Government, a watered-down version of the pokies reform bill was passed in 2011.

That same reform was recently rejected by the Abbott Government.

“The reform initially passed was so watered-down, useless and what we labelled ‘piss weak’ that I advised Nick (Xenophon) to vote against it anyway,” he said.

“The reform was designed to fail and it did just that. Why would you vote for measures that are designed to fail?”

So now, with the failure of the reform only a memory, Bendat has continued to urge a staged adoption of the $1 bet limit so that gamblers will be unable to lose more than $120 on a machine – a campaign he is investing large sums of his own money on.