Cassy O'Connor MP | Greens Leader
Tasmanians who have suffered gambling addiction, including the children, partners and close family of addicts, are set to be abandoned by both State Labor and former Labor MP, now ‘Independent’, Madeleine Ogilvie, when the Liberals bring their destructive gambling policy to Parliament early next year.
While Rebecca White’s Labor Party capitulated to the gambling industry more than a year ago, The Australian newspaper today reports newly elected MP, Ms Ogilvie, is also preparing to back in the Liberals’ policy which will keep pokies in pubs and clubs until 2043.
Ms Ogilvie spoke strongly for the removal of poker machines from pubs and clubs before the 2018 State Election. Today, she has gone to water.
Ms Ogilvie is proposing a voluntary ‘buy back’ scheme to compensate venues willing to surrender their pokies.
This is a laughably improbable scenario given the Liberals’ policy is to individually license venues to continue to profit from low income Tasmanians for the next 25 years.
Ms Ogilvie is in a unique position to put her words from 2018 into action and to help stop the perpetuation of human suffering caused by pokies.
Regrettably, it looks like – on the issue of pokies – Madeleine Ogilvie is no different from her former Labor colleagues, saying one thing to Tasmanians before the election and doing the opposite not long after.
Tasmanians who suffer from gambling addiction and those who’ve lost loved ones to this addiction deserve so much better.