New South Wales Puts Facial Recognition at the Door of Every Gaming Room

The New South Wales government on 25 Αυγούστου 2026 unveiled the most comprehensive tranche of its gaming reform agenda, committing AU$95.2 million over four years to a package built around a statewide exclusion register, mandatory facial recognition at the entrance of every gaming room, a faster reduction in the state’s poker machine fleet, and sweeping restrictions on gambling advertising and direct marketing.

The NSW Gaming Reform package, announced by Minister for Gaming and Racing David Harris, delivers on what the Minns Labor Government calls a key election commitment. It was developed in response to the Roadmap for Gaming Reform prepared by the state’s Independent Panel for Gaming Reform, the NSW Crime Commission’s inquiry into money laundering through electronic gaming machines in hotels and clubs, and consultation with industry, harm-minimisation groups, and privacy experts.

The centrepiece is the NSW Statewide Exclusion Register. Under current arrangements, a person who wants to stop gambling signs a voluntary self-exclusion agreement covering a particular hotel or club, and enforcement rests largely with the venue’s own staff. The new register replaces that fragmented system with a single framework covering every hotel and club in the state with gaming machines, backed by mandatory facial recognition technology at gaming-room entrances so that an exclusion follows the person from venue to venue. A third-party exclusion scheme will also allow family members, friends, venues, and police to initiate exclusions for people at risk.

“These are common sense reforms that have been developed alongside industry, harm minimisation groups, stakeholders and privacy experts to address gambling harm while supporting the industry and protecting the livelihoods of the many people it employs,” Harris said in the release.

Fewer Poker Machines, Removed Permanently

NSW currently operates around 87,000 poker machines across roughly 2,100 clubs and hotels. The government says the number of gaming machine entitlements has declined steadily over the past three years, and the package is designed to accelerate that decline and make every removal permanent.

The main lever is the forfeiture rate applied when entitlements are traded between venues. That rate rises from one in three to one in two, meaning one entitlement is cancelled for every two that change hands. A new “sinking cap” lowers the statewide ceiling as entitlements leave circulation, existing exemptions that allowed transfers without forfeiture will be tightened, and venues gain the option to cancel entitlements voluntarily.

Advertising, VIP Programs, and Direct Marketing

The package bans VIP programs linked to gaming outright and prohibits gambling advertising on all NSW Government and council-owned assets. Betting service providers will be barred from marketing directly to people by phone, email, or text message without their express consent in advance.

Gambling promotions run by affiliates and social media influencers face new transparency requirements, alongside restrictions on commissions tied to higher-risk gambling products. The government has also committed to developing a state-based strategy to reduce online gambling harm and to strengthening enforcement against betting providers and illegal gambling platforms, with new offences, tougher penalties, and stronger regulatory powers.

What the Reform Package Will Cost and When It Takes Effect

The AU$95.2 million, four-year funding commitment is drawn from the money remaining in the state’s AU$100 million gambling harm minimisation fund and an increase in licence fees for clubs and hotels with gaming machines. Within the package, the Responsible Gambling Fund receives a AU$20 million boost over the next two years to support services including GambleAware.

Mandatory facial recognition and the statewide exclusion register are both scheduled to arrive in 2028. Before that, the government will spend the next two years upgrading the Centralised Monitoring System, the infrastructure that tracks gaming machines statewide, so venues can adopt account-based play at their discretion. Under that model a player uses a registered account rather than gambling anonymously; the government notes that technology has advanced since its earlier cashless gaming trial, and that account-based systems can deliver anti-money-laundering and harm-minimisation benefits while still letting players use cash. The release does not set out a legislative timetable for the bills needed to implement the package.

The gambling-harm figures behind the reforms come from the NSW Gambling Survey 2024, which found 3.1% of the state’s adult population experienced moderate-risk gambling and 0.9% experienced high-risk gambling.

The Road to the NSW Gaming Reform Package

The Independent Panel for Gaming Reform delivered its Roadmap for Gaming Reform to the government in Νοέμβριος 2024, after overseeing the state’s cashless gaming trial and advising on the use of the AU$100 million harm minimisation fund. The NSW Crime Commission’s separate inquiry examined how poker machines in hotels and clubs were being used to launder criminal proceeds, and its findings feed directly into the package’s account-based play and exclusion-register components.

The announcement lands one day after Gaming.net reported that Australia’s federal sports-broadcast gambling ad ban will not take full effect until 2031, leaving state-level action like the NSW package as the faster-moving front for advertising restrictions in the country. Self-exclusion enforcement has also been a live regulatory issue beyond Australia: the UK Gambling Commission fined Holland Park Leisure £150,000 this month for failing to participate in a multi-operator self-exclusion scheme, the kind of enforcement gap the NSW register is designed to close.

Alongside the new obligations, the government says it will work with industry to help hotels and clubs build up their hospitality, events, and live entertainment offerings, reducing their reliance on gaming machine revenue as the state’s machine count shrinks.