It’s time to tackle the pokies curse
TODAY, AUSTRALIA IS HOME TO ABOUT 20 PER CENT OF THE WORLD’S POKER MACHINES, DESPITE US COMPRISING JUST 0.3 PER CENT OF THE GLOBAL POPULATION.
THE past two years have rightly been consumed with defending us from the ravages of Covid-19.
From mitigating some of the pandemic’s darker side-effects – from unemployment to increased domestic violence – governments have acted to protect the most vulnerable.
But one issue appears to have slipped under the policy radar: Australia’s growing addiction to poker machines.
As anti-pokie activist and federal MP Andrew Wilkie recently conceded, even he “underestimated the power of the poker machine lobby”.
Wilkie should know. First elected in 2010, Wilkie played a key role in returning Labor’s Julia Gillard to the prime ministership, with reform of the pokie industry a proviso. Gillard then launched her “pre-commitment” policy – patrons would pre-set an amount they were prepared to lose – in the hope that commonsense would prevail.
The powerful ClubsNSW and other groups – already donating millions to the major parties over the years – merely stepped up their public relations rhetoric to accuse anyone arguing for pokie reform as “un-Australian”. Voters in the suburbs, worried by claims they would soon need a “licence to punt”, flooded Labor MPs’ email accounts. Before long, the policy withered on the vine and the pokie industry continued to grow.
In fact, it grew enormously. Today, Australia is home to about 20 per cent of the world’s poker machines, despite us comprising just 0.3 per cent of the global population. Why?
Because we are one of the few nations to allow poker machines outside of casinos.
In 2020, as the pandemic struck, Australians lost almost $20bn on poker machines for an average loss of $1000 for every Australian adult.
Even before the pandemic, Queenslanders were losing $2.4bn annually to one-armed bandits. That’s $6m per day, or more than $4500 every minute.
Of course, not everyone plays the pokies, and not every player is an addict. But 600,000 Australians are habitual players (playing every week), and almost 100,000 are “problem gamblers” who – unbelievably – make up 40 per cent of all poker machine revenue. Another 280,000 players are considered “at risk”.
Pokie venues say they are vigilant in seeking out and counselling problem gamblers, with rules preventing players gambling for more than 12 hours straight.
But the recent Royal Commission into Victoria’s Crown Casino found vigilance over player welfare woefully inadequate.
But we must remember that, like the alcohol and tobacco industries, the gaming machine industry is a business with one objective: to make eye-watering profits, even at the expense of the greater public good.
That’s why the industry defends its mission as one providing thousands of jobs. And that’s true. But the legalisation of illicit and dangerous drugs would also create jobs. Yet that doesn’t mean we should go down that path.
Pokie apologists condemn reformers as killjoys who don’t understand Australians’ tradition of having a drink and a bet with their mates. It’s their democratic right to choose, they say, and culture can’t be changed by legislation.
Yes, it can. Up until a few decades ago, smoking was also part of Aussie culture. But with 50 years of legislative reform, the number of Australian men smoking has fallen from 55 per cent in 1970 to 12 per cent today.
Similar reforms were achieved in reducing drink-driving.
So, what’s different about the pokies?
Put bluntly, governments haven’t got the bottle to reform this dangerous industry because they – as major beneficiaries via gaming taxes – are complicit in their operation.
But if governments can legislate voluntary assisted dying to protect Australia’s vulnerable, they can also reduce – and perhaps even eliminate – this pernicious pokie pandemic.