Poker Machines

Those in the business of applying the defibrillators to Julia Gillard’s prime ministership have been quick to talk up her grace and decency during the tent embassy mayhem, while also pointing an accusatory finger at Tony Abbott for inciting the chaos.

Whatever sympathy Gillard may have received after her frightening ordeal will now be undermined by the resignation late Friday of a junior staffer who had stupidly worded up the protesters as to Abbott’s whereabouts. Nevertheless the PM clearly handled herself with courage and compassion.

The footage revealing her asking the security service to ensure Abbott would also be safely escorted from the restaurant was a credit to her. She didn’t know she was on camera, and there was nothing confected about her concern. Laudable, too, was her comment later that day that her only regret was the violence had disrupted an event recognising the courage of emergency services crews. At a more human level, Gillard simply looked terrified as she was rushed from the building. Only the most jaundiced critic would have felt for her as she was dragged to safety.

Continue reading "Year starts with shoe off, trouble ahead is a shoo-in" »

Everyone’s talking about poker machines these days. Our politicians and our newspapers, our clubs and pubs; everyone has an opinion on what we should and shouldn’t do with regards to the pokies. But they’re talking about numbers and policies, votes and strategies and campaigns.

They’re not talking about the people who have been hurt, who are hurting still. People like me.

When I was 24 years old, I had the world on a string. Life was mine for the taking. I was engaged to be married and surrounded by fantastic friends; I had my university degree framed on the wall, a great job and excellent prospects. But by the time I turned 25, life as I knew it was over. I was addicted to poker machines.

Continue reading "I’d lie awake, pokie music running through my head" »

Tony Abbott described the events in Canberra yesterday surrounding the speakership of the Parliament as a bad day for democracy. Abbott was right, but for the wrong reasons.

The most undemocratic outcome of yesterday’s events could now be that a reform aimed at making life more bearable for problem gamblers, which is supported by a majority of Australians, will now be dumped because Labor has the numbers in the house to get away with pulling it, thus avoiding a fight to the death with powerful gambling interests.

Labor might have been cock-a-hoop at yesterday’s developments but the people who will be even happier are the cashed-up, morally ambivalent multi-millionaires in the gaming industry, who have been escalating their self-interested campaign to knock off suburban Labor MPs lest the Government support the proposed pokie reforms.

Continue reading "Hokey-pokie over speaker may shaft problem gamblers" »

It’s clear from his Punch article that Reverend Tim Costello hasn’t bothered to speak to manufacturers, the industry, or even read the Productivity Commission report before making his claims about mandatory pre-commitment.

In fact based on his claims, I doubt he’d be able to identify a pokie in a police line-up.

We get it Tim. You hate pokies. So much so that you rejected the $500,000 donation club members tried to give World Vision after the Boxing Day Tsunami. Fortunately CARE Australia and Father Chris Riley’s Youth off the Streets had no issue accepting the eventual $3 million.

Continue reading "Costello is a one armed bandit of misinformation" »

Now our Melbourne Cup flutters are out of the way it is worth investigating how it became valid political logic that the healthy fabric of Australian life would be shredded without big-scale gambling.

Not on horses, but gambling on pokies. Not by once-a-year punters or leviathan professionals, by low-income earners who can suddenly find their rent has disappeared down the maw of a gaming machine.

The glorified role of pokies is a political creation and it is total rubbish.

Continue reading "Pokie palaces are sucking the life out of communities" »

Gambling is a serious social problem with horrendous consequences for the vulnerable. I grew up in suburban Brisbane and my most vivid childhood memory of my step father is when he violently ransacked my brother’s school bag for $1.50 and said, “F—k Dean, he can go without.”

He took the boy’s lunch money, slammed the door, and went down to the TAB to place a bet on another horse destined to lose. I’ve never looked at the man the same way since.

Such is the addictive power of gambling that a father would rather see his own son go hungry so he can satisfy his hunger to gamble. Gambling addiction is a disease. It consumes, controls, and destroys. It’s a monster. I know because I’ve seen it. In the long-running sitcom, The Simpsons, Homer Simpson even gave a name to the addictive power of gambling when Marge got hooked on the pokies at George Burns’ casino. He called it “Gamblor”.

Continue reading "The gambling beast is greedy and shows no mercy" »

As Australian Parliamentarians consider their voting positions on poker machine mandatory pre-commitment technologies, the impact on gambling on society, and a sensible and evidence based approach to fix the downsides to gambling, it’s important to consider what regulating this leisure activity will mean to inbound tourism over the next decade and beyond.

To maintain international competitiveness, many Australian casinos have been actively investing in new tourism infrastructure and upgrading existing properties. The total capital expenditure program across Australian casinos exceeds AU$4.4 billion with impressive upgrades to Crown Melbourne and Burswood in Perth, The Star in Sydney, and SKYCITY in Darwin amongst others.

Over the same time, there has been increasing competition from Asia, most notably in the emergence of ‘integrated resorts’ that offer unprecedented opportunities to grow international tourism.  Singapore has overseen the construction of two integrated casino resorts at a combined cost of around AU$12 billion. 

Continue reading "Kill the pokies and risk killing tourism too" »

After more than a decade in politics, I have sadly grown used to watching the often bizarre stances taken by other pollies and wondering why they are doing what they are doing.

The response of some members of the Coalition to the poker machine issue is a case in point.

To truly understand the Coalition’s current position on pokies, you need to know it has nothing to do with pokies.

Continue reading "Coalition stance on pokies has nothing to do with pokies" »

It’s stating the obvious, but problem gamblers have a problem. They suffer from a horrible addiction – the same as alcoholics and druggies – that causes impulses they cannot resist and consequences that affect all those around them.

Like all addicts, problem gamblers go to extreme lengths to get their fix. For 60 per cent, that involves committing a crime to get the cash to feed their habit.

A report by private corruption investigation group Warfield & Associates found poker machines were the most common way to gamble stolen money. The study found between 2008-10 a whopping $13 million was stolen to play the pokies.

Continue reading "Labor’s pokies reforms are the biggest gamble of all" »

Yesterday in The Punch, David Penberthy ridiculed the gambling industry’s claims that pokie-reform was un-Australian. But the $20m campaign by Australian Hotels Association and Clubs Australia campaign about the so-called “licence to punt” is more than just shallow and bankrupt politicking – it’s plainly misleading.

There is NO proposal to have a licence to punt and those concerned about the damage poker machines do are not calling for a licence to punt.

The pre-commitment scheme currently under consideration applies only to poker machines (not punting more generally) and at its simplest is a basic consumer protection tool which will allow gamblers to pre-set a limit to how much they will spend.

Continue reading "Big Gaming is pushing all the wrong buttons" »

There is a punchy two-word response to claims from the sporting community about the multi-million dollar losses they will sustain if the Federal Government presses ahead with measures to tackle gambling addiction. Sucked in.

For sheer intellectual laziness and candid self-interest, documents don’t get much worse than the formal submission by the South Australian National Football League to the parliamentary inquiry on gaming reform.

Summarised, the SANFL argues that the measures to reduce problem gambling will cost the State’s football clubs $7 million a year. The document is framed around inertia in that it argues for the status quo, rejecting all measures such as compelling gamblers to register with clubs before they spend money on poker machines, and to specify how much money they want to spend if they choose to do so.

Continue reading "No pity for the poor pokie-addicted millionaires" »

Now that the Cup’s behind us and Shocking has won it, let’s get serious about addressing the massive gap in our national dialogue on gambling. It’s that gap that’s referred to in the title of this piece.

Punch deputy editor Tory Maguire wrote a great piece recently on the scourge of the pokies. In it, she summarised some of the measures proposed to combat that electronic plague. But where is the same debate about racing?

The Melbourne Cup is a great national event. I’ve written about it in glowing, enthusiastic terms twice on this website this week, and countless times elsewhere. I once even argued that Cup Day should be our National Day. Everybody, sing with me: Horse Trainers all let us rejoice…

Continue reading "Shocking result but gambling is the real winner" »

Towards the end of the recent 4Corners report on James Packer’s gambling fortunes former PBL director Geoff Cousins gave his assessment of the casino game.

“They’re frankly just a horrible business,” Cousins said. “They live off the misfortunes of others and they are a completely non productive business. They don’t create anything, they just take people’s money and shove it down a hole and now and again if they’re forced to, they give a tiny bit of it back.”

It was an excellent summation that could equally be applied to the casino’s little brother: poker machines.

Continue reading "‘Managed liberalisation’ a soft touch on pokie scourge" »