The western suburbs of Melbourne is flooded with electronic gaming machines, the dreaded the pokies. The recent Melton Shire Council decision to approve a facility to increase gaming revenue is just another step backward in tackling problem gambling.
My own suburb is absolutely flooded with pokies. There is not a venue I know in my huge municipality, one of the biggest metropolitan municipalities, where I can go out for a drink, pub meal or live entertainment without having to put up with the incessant noise from the pokies. Indeed my municipality’s Council took months to make a decision, it had early rejected out of spite of the motion’s original mover, on a policy response to problem gambling.
But gambling provides such lucrative revenues at the expense of the poor and the addicted. And this kind of devastation is evident throughout my municipality. As with health problems like addictions of this social magnitude there needs to be greater consideration, a greater weight if you will, given to the all too predictable long-term outcomes of electronic gaming machines.
Part of the problem is the lack of action from local government in areas they have regulatory powers and oversight. In this case my Council could take more proactive steps by placing restrictions on poker machine venue advertising on-site, and then actually auditing and monitoring such restrictions. This simple step, something adopted in Queensland, can help reduce the craving to ‘play’ the gambling machines. My Council could require specifications of building design and layouts for gambling rooms and to require that the gambling areas are segregated from other rooms and cannot be visible from the outside of the building.
And now the Prime Minister has weighed into the debate. While there is no doubt that there needs to be a national response to this social health problem, how will the Rudd Government use the corporations act to override the rights of the State? Will there be more threats, like the one issued to sporting clubs not working to curb binge and problem drinking, if the states don’t do something then they’ll get less GST pie?
There needs to be greater cooperation between levels of government to tackle this major issue or at least a greater political willingness to take the measures necessary.
Filed under: Rants & Raves | Tagged: culture, electronic gaming machines, gambling, government, politics, problem gambling
