The latest news, views and stories about poker machine addiction, and the need for reform.
An overwhelming 70 per cent of the Australian electorate support serious poker machine reform to stem the losses suffered by people addicted to poker machines, a new survey by AMR Research has found.
Australians lose more money betting than citizens of any other country and slot machines are powering the problem, Oliver Milman writes for The Guardian.
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A caring state is no nanny, it is doing its job.
Chris Middendorp, a Melbourne community worker, discusses why government intervention is a necessary step.
I didn’t choose to become an addict. Sure, I chose to play poker machines but I didn’t choose the consequences. There is a massive difference between recreation and addiction, and the sad truth is that one can lead to the other.
| — | Tom Cummings is a former poker machine addict who has turned his attention to gambling reform and the industry in general. |
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487 poker machines in Melton, Victoria each collected more than $111,000.
Monash University gambling expert Dr Charles Livingstone said the impact of the losses was even worse than it might first appear. “The Productivity Commission estimates that 40 per cent of pokie losses come from people with a serious gambling problem, and another 20 per cent from those with a less serious but nonetheless well-developed problem.” (source: Melton Weekly)
If you could walk for a day in my shoes, you’d be keen for poker machine reform. Yesterday, I spoke with a man who spent several years on the street after he’d put a perfectly good Sydney house down the poker machines. Even though he’s lost everything, his addiction remains. I spoke with a very likeable man this morning who wept as he told me of his plans to suicide. He hates his inability to be free of the pokies. My tin pot theory about this addiction is that the cause is not located within an individual’s head andtherefore, neither is the cure. Boredom and isolation appear to play a major role. The kind of community engagement, where people’s contributions are valued and people take part in physical exercise, social fun, hobbies and learning of some kind, are the things that are usually missing in someone who becomes addicted to the spinning wheels that lead to poverty. I have no great feeling about mandatory pre-commitment because it seems to me a cheaper and more effective reform would be to simply limit the value of the bets that can be made. Maybe people would get bored and go home while they still have money in their pockets to pay the bills and feed the family. I urge our Prime Minister and all our MPs to give families a valuable gift this Australia Day.
| — | The Reverend Graham Long, pastor of the Wayside Chapel in Sydney’s Kings Cross |
Courier Mail: Poker machine losses follow Queensland floods
A very sad story in the Brisbane Courier Mail about how poker machine losses in Queensland increased significantly after last year’s floods:
Queenslanders blew $1.9 billion on the pokies last year in one of the state’s darkest gambling chapters, as punters lost $3600 a minute.
The 2011 loss figure is $100 million more than each of the previous two years, with Queenslanders losing record amounts on the pokies as the state battled to recover from a summer of natural disasters.
In a sad twist, experts believe the natural disaster hangover and the millions of dollars in flood assistance payments lining pockets could have ramped up the state’s losses.
