Everyone who walks into a gaming room in a New South Wales hotel or club will have their face scanned and checked against a statewide exclusion register from 2028, under the reform package the state government announced on Tuesday.
The register holds the people who are barred. The scanning covers everyone who walks in. NSW has about 87,000 gaming machines across more than 2,100 venues, and the package also creates a third party exclusion scheme, so a family member will be able to have someone else added to the register.
Some venues already run the technology. Since 18 March 2026 they have done so under a code of practice issued by Liquor and Gaming NSW under the Gaming Machines Act 2001. That code is voluntary, and the state does not approve the systems being installed under it.
“Regulatory approval to voluntarily install and operate FRT in venues is not currently required," the regulator says in its guidance. "Accordingly, as a voluntary scheme Liquor & Gaming NSW does not keep a list of suitable FRT providers." Vendors measure their own systems against the standard rather than submitting them to the state for testing.”
The standard the code points to is the face recognition evaluation program run by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, which measures how often a system matches the wrong person and how often it fails to match the right one, broken down by demographic group. Both numbers matter at a door. A missed match lets an excluded person walk past. A wrong match stops someone who was never on the register.
On the data itself, the code requires images to be held in Australia, encrypted with AES 256 bit encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 or better in transit, captured at 1080p or better, and discarded immediately where they do not match a person on the exclusion list. Systems have to run at 99.9 per cent uptime during trading hours and be penetration tested by an independent third party every year. Installers need a class 2 security licence.
The code also sets out what venues may not do with the systems. They cannot be linked to sign in records, scanned identity documents or payment data. They cannot be used for anti money laundering checks or for general venue security. They cannot be used for marketing, or to pick out high spending patrons, even where the patron has agreed to it.
The rest of the package moves on machine numbers and on advertising. The forfeiture rate when entitlements are traded rises from one in three to one in two, and a sinking cap will apply to the statewide number of entitlements. VIP programs tied to gaming end. Gambling advertising is banned on all NSW government and council owned assets, unsolicited calls, emails and texts to prospective customers are banned without express consent, and affiliate and influencer promotions will carry disclosure requirements.
The government has put $95.2 million over four years behind the tranche, drawn from what is left of a $100 million gambling harm minimisation fund and from higher licence fees on clubs and hotels with gaming machines. A further $20 million over two years goes to the Responsible Gambling Fund. The state's centralised monitoring system will be upgraded over two years to support account based play.
Minister for Gaming and Racing David Harris said the measures were "common sense reforms developed alongside industry, harm minimisation groups, stakeholders and privacy experts to address gambling harm while supporting the industry".
The NSW Gambling Survey 2024 found 3.1 per cent of adults in the state were experiencing moderate risk gambling and 0.9 per cent high risk gambling.
The scheme becomes mandatory in 2028. Until then the code covering the venues already scanning faces remains voluntary, and the companies supplying those systems certify their own compliance with it.
