POKER machines syphoned an average of around $630 from every adult citizen in the City of Bendigo last financial year. That’s about $90 a minute around the clock every day of the year, more than $47 million that could have been spent in other local businesses or invested in a thousand different ways to improve people’s lives.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The depressing statistics emerging from the latest Victorian Gambling Commission annual report on local government losses mask a human tragedy of immense proportions. It keeps getting worse.
Research has proven pokies are directly linked to relationship breakdown, job loss, bankruptcy, suicide attempts, increased crime rates and children going hungry.
Not all poker machine players are addicts. But too many are. And too many who begin as safe players develop a harmful addiction. Pokies are seen by vulnerable, socially isolated, and those with mental health issues as a safe haven for them to get away from the pressures they face, or as a replacement to the companion they cannot find. But make no mistake, pokies are the archetypal wolf dressed up in sheep clothing, with its sole function to syphon off as much money as they can from vulnerable populations. There must be a better way.
Unfortunately Anglicare fears it may get worse before it gets better in the nation with the highest per capita use of poker machines in the world. We are just starting to see the rise in smart phone apps that normalise gambling with the young. Many of these deviously mimic the structure and nature of poker machine gambling.
Anglicare’s views on poker machines are informed by our gamblers’ help services we run in Bendigo and other major towns in the Loddon-Mallee region. We know that making contact with problem gamblers is the key to addressing the issue. Once contact is made, directly or through a family member or someone else close to the gambler, we know they can be helped with effective measures.
However we also know that for each of the 600 people we saw last year, there are another 10 we don’t see who are also having problems with pokies. The community, the gaming industry and our politicians must find ways to reach the 90 per cent who are not getting help in Bendigo and the rest of Victoria.
Of course, prevention is better than cure. And there are many measures that can be effective to stop the damage before it becomes uncontrollable. Here are just a few: mandatory pre-commitment of maximum spend, maximum $1 bets, self-exclusion programmes, require use of real coins rather than tokens, redesign of poker machines to eliminate false reward or false hope signals, regulating the promotion of gambling in children’s viewing time, banning of venue “lures” such as free community rooms and other goods and services. What are the odds of those measures happening any time soon?
