Thursday 23 October 2008

I quite like gambling as fun

I like the idea of gambling as fun, the trouble is that it easily degenerates into something nasty.
It was interesting to watch Peter Newell at the National Press Club yesterday trying to justify Clubs Australia's massive ongoing investment in poker machines. As a media professional he handled himself competently and dealt with tricky questions by not answering them or by answering another question altogether.
Controversial amongst his answers was the proposed '6 Point Plan' which includes a strategy to allow family members to dob problem gamblers in. This would seem to be fraught with difficulty, and even in SA where this has had some limited testing the results have been woefully small (less than 15 people in two years).
I feel sorry for the community clubs, they are not the real villains I suspect. Casinos and other totally dedicated gambling venues are a different thing altogether; hotels who have totally redesigned their operations around cheap drinks and food designed to lure the gambler in; are these ethical.
Tim Costello asked Newell "What level of revenue is it ethical for venues to make from problem gamblers?" He had the good sense to not answer it, it is a wife-beating question. It is also like asking a publican how much money they can ethically take from alcoholics and other problem drinkers! Or supermarkets how much chocolate they can ethically sell to the obese.
In a State where a person was shot this week because they were dealt a 'lucky hand' at cards, which someone didn't like, we can indeed see that gambling is fraught with high emotions and distortions

2 comments:

Daviidv said...

Dear Mr Clark
I believe that gambling as fun should be allowed to continue as Australians are in a fortunate position to have freedom to choose, a point often used by anti anti-pokies groups. However, once the fun is replaced by problems with gambling, there is no effective harm reduction strategies. The dob in a gambler idea could be part of a total package of ideas, that along with smart cards, goes a long way to preventing real harm happening. As founder of www.makepokiessafe.com I think despite a lot of criticism at the Clubs Australia speech, it is moving towards a better way to fix the problems and should be encouraged, and those views are expanded at the makepokiessafe site. Richard Wolff

Stephan Clark said...

Yes well you sort of get my point.
I found your website really difficult to follow because of its poor layout.