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The minister in charge of implementing Tasmania’s cashless pokies card has dumped his shares in one of the country’s biggest hotel and gaming operators to avoid a conflict of interest.
Roger Jaensch was announced as Tasmania’s new finance minister on October 20, taking over from Liberal MP Nic Street.
As finance minister, Mr Jaensch is in charge of the regulation of liquor and gaming.
Roger Jaensch was sworn is as the minister for finance in the recent cabinet reshuffle. (ABC News: Ebony ten Broeke)
Until recently, he held just over $2,000 in shares in Endeavour Group, which describes itself as “Australia’s most responsible operator of hotels, alcohol and gaming facilities”.
Endeavour Group is the owner of the Australian Leisure and Hospitality (ALH) Group. It has 350 licensed venues across Australia. Six of them are in Tasmania, all of them licensed gaming venues.
When contacted on Monday about the shares, a spokeswoman told the ABC Mr Jaensch was in the “process” of selling the shares.
“The minister is in the process of divesting the Endeavour Group shares, removing any conflict of interest, and will update the register of interests accordingly,” she said.
When the ABC followed up the next day, it was told “the divestment was completed on October 28”, the same day the ABC contacted Mr Jaensch about his shareholding.
Mr Jaensch’s new cabinet position means he takes over responsibility for an ambitious plan to introduce nation-leading mandatory cashless gaming cards with spending caps for poker machines, a proposal that was being pushed by former treasurer Michael Ferguson.
But many anti-gambling advocates fear the card’s future is in doubt, after Premier Jeremy Rockliff claimed a “more measured approach” is needed.
Mr Rockliff has repeatedly claimed the government is still committed to the cashless card and to implementing other harm minimisation methods announced during the state election campaign.
The gaming card was initially set to feature spending caps of $100 a day or $5,000 per year, but Mr Rockliff’s comments have sparked fears the limits might be watered down, or the card made voluntary, rather than mandated.
MP’s heightened concerns
The revelation Mr Jaensch held shares in a gaming and hospitality operator intensified independent MP Kristie Johnston’s worries.
“It’s deeply disturbing that the minister has shares in a pokies company, even if he is divesting his interest of them,” she said.
Kristie Johnston doubted Mr Jaensch’s capacity to regulate the liquor and gaming industry. (ABC News: Maren Preuss)
“The pokie machine industry is a dirty industry, and anyone who’s associated with that has dirt on their hands.”
She believed Mr Jaensch would not be genuine in attempting to reduce the harm caused by poker machines due to the “strong affiliation with the industry”, and claimed he should not have been made finance minister.
Divestiture ‘not that slow’, integrity expert says
Professor Charles Sampford, who is a board member of Accountability Round Table — an organisation “dedicated to improving transparency and accountability in Australian Commonwealth and state governments” — said the Ministerial Code of Conduct did not prescribe how quickly shares needed to be divested.
Charles Sampford said “a little bit of time” should be allowed for people to adjust to new roles. (ABC News: Alexandra Humphries)
He said Mr Jaensch’s divestiture was, in fact, “not that slow”.
“The general thing is that the sooner, the better, because the longer that shares are held, rather than being divested, the more that government decisions or potential decisions may affect the value of those shares, and therefore the perception of conflict of interest,” Professor Sampford said.
“There’s another side to this, you do need to give people a little bit of time,” he said.
“It’s something I’m a conscious of, that somebody becomes a new minister and there’s a whole lot of issues in play pressing on them and when it comes to declarations of interest they may actually forget.
“[This case is] not all that slow to be honest.”
Hospitality association fears business fallout from planned card
While the Tasmanian Hospitality Association says it is committed to new methods to minimise gaming harm, including using facial recognition technology, it is fiercely opposed to the cashless gaming card.
Its strong campaign against the card, which included issuing a release entitled “Lies, Lies and More Lies” on the day it was first announced in 2022, led to the government commissioning a report from consulting firm Deloitte about its impact on the state’s hospitality industry.
The THA has since claimed that up to half of the state’s venues would close if it was implemented.
The Australian Hospitality Association (AHA) is also invested in the outcome of the mandatory cards, concerned other states might adopt the policy if it goes ahead in Tasmania.
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