Tops in pokies per capita
Australians lost almost A$24 billion (US$18 billion) in a 12-month period, according to data compiled by the Queensland state government. More than half of that total was spent on poker or slot machines at pubs and clubs, reports the BBC. And more than 75 percent of the world’s non-casino slot machines are located in the nation.
Those figures have anti-gaming activists up in arms. They say gambling can result in crippling debt, depression, divorce and in some cases, even suicide.
Tim Costello of Australia’s Alliance for Gambling Reform says as many as 400 people each year commit suicide because of compulsive gambling. Costello says some gaming machines are “built for addiction, releasing the dopamine (a mood-setting chemical) that hits your brain with the force of cocaine.” He said addicts “describe entering a zone where their problems simply dematerialize; it completely neutralizes the anxiety.”
Australia has more pokies per person than almost any other country, the BBC reported—almost 200,000 in total.
Les, a 60-ish member of a Sydney-area branch of Gamblers Anonymous said, “Even though your drudgery of life outside mightn’t be that crash-hot, you go into a gambling room and suddenly you’re important because they want your money. And we fall for that illusion. You don’t have a life. The machines own you.”
Last July, the government of Victoria decreed that the number of gaming machines in the southern state would be suspended for 25 years under a “harm minimization” policy.
“Nationwide statistics show more work needs to be done across the country,” said Victorian Minister of Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Marlene Kairouz. “Victoria is now leading the way on reforms to help gamblers stick to their limits and to tackle gambling-related harm.”
Charles Livingstone, a gambling researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, said millions of Australians are “directly affected by gambling. It is a serious problem and it is getting worse. We far exceed any other country on earth and the reason for that is because we have so many gambling opportunities.”
Australians spend an average of AU $1,300 per capita a year on gambling, Livingstone said. The next highest is around AU $600 in Singapore.
Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper alleges that a “landmark report on gambling addiction” that recommended modifying poker machines for greater transparency “was sat on” by the New South Wales government for almost two years.
Fairfax Media reported that former NSW Deputy Premier and Gaming Minister Troy Grant declined to release the report, which recommended banning a features that “disguised losses as wins” in poker machines.
For example, if a player bets $1 and “wins” 75 cents, that “win” is marked by flashing lights and music, even though in fact the player lost 25 cents.
Grant’s successor, Paul Toole, released the report in October. A spokesman for Toole said the report’s recommendations needed be to “clarified and further considered by Liquor & Gaming NSW” before it could be released.
“It was important the government gave due regard to these issues as part of an extensive process of evaluation,” he said. “There was also a need to draft a formal government response document and for both the report and response document to be considered by cabinet. Once this had all occurred, the report was released without delay.”
To make matters worse for the clubs, the Australia Institute has released a report showing that the nation contains a disproportionate number of the world’s slot machines based outside of casinos.
The number of pub and club-based slot machines in Australia makes up 76 percent of the world’s pub and club-based slot machines, according to the report, written by Bill Browne and Leanne Minshull.
As a whole, Australia holds 6 percent of the world’s slot machines, (not including Japan’s pachinko parlors), giving it one of the highest number of gaming machines per capita (at 123 people per gaming machine).
With 835,000 of the world’s 1,076,000 poker machines, representing almost 80 percent located in dedicated gambling venues such as casinos, racetracks and slot halls, the paper concentrates on the remaining 241,000, situated in the worlds pubs and clubs, claiming that 187,000 of those are in Australia.
““In terms of machines per person, Australia is right up there with casino-states like Monaco, Macau and Caribbean Island nations,” wrote researcher Browne. “Australia’s large number of poker machines and our unusual decision to allow them in pubs and clubs make us a global anomaly.
“Other gambling games can also be risky, but poker machines are high-intensity, putting people at risk of losing hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour. We talk about the ‘Western Australian Model’ of keeping pokies out of pubs and clubs, but WA is consistent with global practice.”
The report comes on the heels of an announcement from Tasmania’s Labor party, which pledged to phase out pokie machines in the state by 2023. It made no recommendations.
