‘Sorry, but’: Why the premier won’t let pokies risk his election jackpot

May 28, 2026 — 5:00am

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Chris Minns is sorry about all the pokies. This week, after this masthead reported two senior Labor figures from the Left and Right factions – Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne and Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey – had each put forward motions calling for a significant reduction in poker machines to the party’s upcoming state conference in July, the premier lamented the state of the industry.

“If we were starting from scratch, there’s no way we would deploy 90,000 total machines in suburbs across Sydney and NSW,” Minns said. But he quickly relegated the issue, once again, to the too-hard basket. “I just caution against there being supposed buckets of money to compensate clubs if we were going to drive them out of business.”

Leave aside, for a moment, the very clubs-inspired line that cutting poker machine numbers means driving them to ruin, the “sorry, but” response just about sums up Labor’s attitude to poker machines since coming to power.

The question is, why?

The reality is NSW has probably missed its Nixon-goes-to-China moment on pokies.

Minns faces internal........

© The Sydney Morning Herald