After 70 years of poker machines causing harm, there is growing hope that the tide is turning in Australia’s pokie capital, Sydney. “Every day across our state, around 26 million dollars is lost through poking machines,” Wesley Mission CEO Stu Cameron told the Sydney Summit on Poker Machine Harm, last night. “The latest New South Wales government figures show that people lost $2.37 billion in just three months to poker machines in the first three months of this year. That’s more than 9% higher than the same period last year, more than twice the rate of inflation. At this rate, in New South Wales, players will lose more than $10 billion this calendar year.”
The rally featured Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne, Professor Sally Gainsbury, the director of the Centre of Excellence in Gambling Research at Sydney University, and Cara Varian, CEO of the NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS). On stage at the Marrickville Town Hall, they also served as a sample of the forces lining up to push for poker machine reform.
“Our advocacy is not about opposing pubs and hotels, it’s about reducing gambling harm, protecting people, families and communities,” Cameron said. “In the community in which we meet tonight, the Innerwest, Wesley Mission expects residents to lose just under $200 million this year. By 2028, if nothing changes, we expect some council areas such as Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield to lose more than $1 billion each, every single year, every single year.”
Cameron pointed to the “significant, truly historic moment” of the ALP State Conference unanimously adopting a gambling reform program with a moratorium on licences for new machines, requiring clubs with profits of more than $20m on machines to pay more tax, and reducing the number of gaming machines in the state over 10 years.
Artist Nelson Nghe put a human face on gambling harm, telling the summit his family’s story. “As the reels of a poker machine line up for a loss, what you will never see are the faces of the children, families and friends who are impacted. My name is Nelson, and I’m one of those invisible faces. I’m one of those invisible children. So invisible that I’d like to show you what gambling harm looks like for a child. Gambling harm looked like watching my coin jar slowly dwindle day by day with no explanation. Gambling harm also looked like all of us driving around for meetings as a family, going to small money lenders to submit paperwork. And I thought that was us. Gambling harm also looks like watching my mum panic every time I got her the mail, because that was probably a bank that needed money. And that’s not to mention the strangers who came to our house at midnight asking for money. They knew where we lived.”
Cara Varian from NCOSS took us to the front line, a Western Suburbs welfare office: “I thought I’d talk to you about one of my members whom I spoke to this week. And she talked about how every week, every day, they see gambling in their centre harm across the front desk through food insecurity vouchers. Rarely on the first time, but after a couple of visits, we find out that, actually, gambling becomes part of that story about why they need that voucher.
“Often it’s when our workers are sitting down with the community member and going through their bills to help them or their bank statements to help them do a budget to pay back that interest free loan and they start to see that gambling turn up…”
“It’s always at the top of the list of the service providers’ conversations with me. And I guess the link that I wanted to raise here is that connection between mental health concerns, and the people who are at most risk of gambling are also likely to experience mental health issues and also likely to experience financial hardship.
So I think we can’t disconnect them from each other. And there’s been research put out by the state government this year that shows that the prevalence of poker machines in a local government area is connected to the police reports of domestic and family violence in that same LGA.”
Sydney University’s gambling expert, Professor Sally Gainsbury, added to the picture: “Having had the privilege of running a treatment clinic that serves Central Sydney, Southwest and Western Sydney, which serves over a thousand people a year. That is maybe less than 10% of people who are experiencing harm. We know that people just don’t seek treatment. [We are] somewhat underutilised. … Even when someone stops gambling, those harms will last so much longer. It’s trust and relationships that can’t be repaired.”
Darcy Byrne pointed out that gambling harm is an inescapable problem for local government, the closest layer of government to the community. “I reckon every single local representative in New South Wales could tell you about people that they know who raises concern with them [because of gambling harm]. And we know. It’s just very consistent. And it’s right across the State. In a way, it’s not a party issue. It doesn’t matter who you vote for or what your political preferences are. FVast majority of people in New South Wales can see it’s a significant problem. They see it as a social justice issue and it’s gone on for too long.”
Balmain boy Byne had a family story. “My parents, they would do the form every week for the racing betting on a Saturday and they loved it. And they always, they really disparaged pokermachines because they like the idea that betting took skill? And it was only after my dad after he became demented that then he would go in every fortnight when he would get his pension. And he’d go into the pub and he’d just slap that button until all of his pension was gone.”
“Even though a lot of my friends have always played with pokies I found them pretty boring. But since I’ve been more involved, I’ve been paying more attention to the machines, and they’ve changed so much. It’s like a movie screen. It’s not like an entertainment device. It’s obviously something that’s there to capture and hold your attention. And unlike all of you are not an expert on this issue. But I think we need to look at all the solutions, not one of them.”
Perhaps the alarming statement from the summit came from Professor Gainsbury, who explained we don’t actually know the full extent of gambling harm. “We don’t have enough data. It’s great that we do have some studies, but unlike something like alcohol related violence. When the police come to a domestic violence incident, they mark on their form was alcohol was involved. When there’s an emergency report at the hospital, there’s a box to tick for alcohol or for drugs. There’s mandatory testing. No one’s asking about gambling. The coroners are starting to maybe look into gambling in suicides. We know they are astronomically high. Gambling is the deadliest mental health disorder out there, but we’re not counting all of these. We’re not reporting it in any domestic violence. We’re not reporting it in terms of crime, in terms of doctor’s visits, social welfare. If we actually started reporting it, the costs would be so high.”
Wesley Mission has a campaign site to help people get involved with gambling reform. Darcy Byrne urged all at the summit to get behind Wesley Mission’s campaign.
Here are the five aims of the campaign:
• Implement universal cashless gambling with harm reduction measures built-in,
• Power down poker machines after midnight,
• Fund an independent State-wide Self-Exclusion Register
• Let communities have a say
• Greater transparency in NSW – publish venue data