One-armed Bandits Steal Game's Soul

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday March 8, 2008

Richard Hinds rhinds@smh.com.au

IF YOU want to know why Russell Crowe's most heroic role is as a crusader against sport's insidious addiction to poker machines you don't need to enter one of those depressing, soulless dives where bright lights, gold trimmings and cheap drinks camouflage the operators' - often our beloved football clubs' - ruthless intent.

You don't need to see the victims stare blankly into the flashing metal box filled with their ruthlessly rigged circuitry. You don't need to witness the repetitive precision with which their fingers feed gold coins into the slots in rhythm with the calculated spin rate, seemingly oblivious that their money is disappearing faster than Marion Jones from a random drug test.

If you want the most poignant image of how poker machines help destroy lives at the same time they pay for our teams' new gymnasiums, stand outside. Watch the broken loser try to escape from the gaudy pokie palaces populated, in daylight hours, by lonely, desperate people for whom the flashing lights and occasional rattle of coins temporarily fills an aching void.

When living a few doors down from one such place, we called it the Pokies Polka. First the forlorn gamblers marches quickly out the door blinking in the sunlight. Then he stops suddenly as if tethered to a machine. Finally, he turns and takes a few steps toward the door, reconciling in the same instant the money he has just lost with the begging, borrowing or stealing he will do just to get back on the stool. This dance was always most depressing in the morning, when people would wander away with an entire day to bleed from their self-inflicted wounds.

Of course, we only supposed what they were thinking. Those advocating the "recreational" qualities of poker machines - particularly the greatest poker machine addicts of all, those holding the state government purse strings - will tell you that they are often played by the vibrant, wealthy funsters portrayed on television commercials. The dudes with flash cars and perky girlfriends who never fail to defy the overwhelming odds by hitting the jackpot.

They will argue that poker machines represent a freedom no different than those who choose to buy a lottery ticket or punt at a TAB where the average demographic is hardly top of the town. But they are spinning faster than the jacks, queens and kings.

If our suppositions relied on stereotypes, studies of poker-machine use leave little to the imagination. The surveys that tell you that anywhere up to 72 per cent of poker machine revenue comes from those who can least afford to lose it - the poor and unemployed. The maps illustrating how poker-machine operators - your team and mine - target areas populated by the most vulnerable.

Ruthless in this cash grab are the Victorian AFL clubs. Those who, in the days when that state was happily poker-machine free, sneered at rugby league's dependence on gaming revenue. A recent Monash University study estimates poker machines operated by Victorian AFL clubs generated $110 million last financial year, of which $36 million went to the clubs. (The clubs claim these figures are vastly exaggerated.)

Club officials argue they need poker machines to raise the up to $50 million a year required to operate a competitive franchise - particularly when clubs in cash-rich, pokie-free Western Australia do so without a single machine. Yet surely a competition with a $720 million television rights deal can prosper without putting its hands in the pockets of the addicted and the gullible.

If clubs cannot generate sufficient revenue to pay Chris Judd $1 million then he should be forced to live on $900,000. If the clubs need more aid from the AFL, then perhaps the $1.4 million paid to chief executive Andrew Demetriou could be slashed to $1.2 million. Otherwise, the AFL's justified reputation as a community leader in areas such as racial vilification is compromised.

Predictably, rather than a stampede of followers, Crowe's stand last year brought only uncomfortable murmurs from other NRL clubs, who did not like being reminded about their pokie dependency. There was even some muffled dissent from those who accused Crowe of engaging in moralistic showboating and only pulling the plug on South's pokies because he and Peter Holmes a Court could afford to. But are not those with the will and the means the ones best placed to lead the fight?

People like Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, who has a television station at his disposal. Like Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett, the former state premier and champion of depression awareness. Just two men who should cure their club's addiction and join Crowe's fight.