Fighting “malevolent bastards”
Senator Nick Xenophon of Australia says he will make 2017 a “very unhappy year for the gambling industry” in the Land Down Under. The South Australian lawmaker pledges to take retailer Woolworths along with all pokie machine makers to a Senate inquiry and make them publicly justify their support of expanded minimum pokie stakes.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, supermarket giant Coles wanted to introduce bet limits on its more than 3,000 machines, but big game manufacturers including Aristocrat, IGT, Konami, SG Gaming and Ainsworth Game Technology blocked that effort. Close to $200 million a year is lost on pokies played in the company’s chain supermarkets, anti-gaming MP Andrew Wilkie said.
Coles, owned by Wesfarmers operates more than 3,000 machines in 89 pubs, mainly in Queensland, which requires that facilities that sell alcohol must be attached to a hotel. Wesfarmers Managing Director Richard Goyder says the limit would reduce gambling addiction, something his company is concerned about.
Goyder told the AAP “They are telling us that there needs to be an industry approach or they’re not going to do it.” He added, “We decided a while ago that we’d try to do a trial in half a dozen of our hotels, but we can’t do it because the machine manufacturers won’t make the change.”
Woolworths is the biggest pokies operator in Australia with more than 12,000 machines, reports the Canberra Times. The publication reported that pokies account for at least 80 percent of revenue for the Woolworths hotel brand, Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group, which reaped $4.11 billion in the 2016 financial year.
Woolworths spokesman David Curry told Fairfax Media that $1 bet limits are not “evidenced-based” and noted that they should not be singled out for betting limits, which have not been imposed on Keno, lotteries and other gaming products.
“We already have industry-leading, voluntary pre-commitment installed on all our gaming machines in mainland Australia. We’re the only company to do so,” Curry said. “And if you look at the prevalence rates of problem gambling, they’ve more than halved over the past decade.”
But Xenophon and Wilkie remain unimpressed. They say the pokie business is run by “malevolent bastards” and “a pack of pariahs,” reported the Times.
“On the political front, I’ll be pushing for a Senate inquiry to haul the pokie machine manufacturers and indeed Woolworths to explain to the Senate, to the people of Australia, why they refused to be part of making these machines less addictive,” Xenophon said. “I’ll be seeking advice from senior counsel today in relation to whether there is any potential action under our competition laws in this country.”
And Wilkie said Crown Resorts chief James Packer once told him that $1 bets were “the one thing the industry did not want.”
Australians wager more than $11.5 billion a year on pokies every year; of that total, an estimated 40 percent of losses come from problem gamblers, according to a report from the Australian Productivity Commission.
Gaming Technologies Association CEO Ross Ferrar commented, “It would likely entail significant time, cost and resources to build, test and deploy new equipment to the standards of integrity and performance required.”
