State should get off pokie gravy train and empower councils

By the time you have finished reading this, Queenslanders will have fed another $20,000 into poker machines, the flow of money during March running at a record $250,000 an hour, writes Mike O’Connor.

BY the time you have finished reading this, Queenslanders will have fed another $20,000 into poker machines, the flow of money during March running at a record $250,000 an hour.

There was a time, back in those days all but lost in the swirling mists of fading memory, when no trip to the Gold Coast was complete without a visit to the Terranora Country Club.

Qld poker machine losses climb to new record

Sitting on a ridge with sweeping views of the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, the club echoed to the sound of poker machines as they sucked money out of the pockets of day tripper Queenslanders.

Denied the opportunity to play the machines in our own state where they were banned, we flocked across the border into sinful NSW to “have a flutter on the pokies”.

That all changed when the late Labor Party Premier Wayne Goss ended the ban in 1992, a decision he lived to regret.

“I wish I’d never brought in poker machines. I think they’re a scourge,’’ he said later.

The genie is well and truly out of the bottle now. The Government expects to get $750 million in gaming machine taxes this financial year. It has become addicted to the revenue flow and is unlikely to do anything that would jeopardise this river of gold. How strange it is that a government which is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to protect the black-throated finch and forgo royalties and jobs in the process, shows no interest in stemming the social damage being inflicted on the electorate by gambling on poker machines.

Local councils, however, are trying to make an effort.

Councils have asked for more power over the approvals process for poker machines. File picture

Noosa Shire Council Mayor Tony Wellington has said councils are tired of cleaning up the social costs of gaming machines. Councils have asked for, and should be granted, more powers over the approval process.

At present they can only lodge an objection, which can be ignored by the Government, if a hotel, pub or club applies for 20 or more machines.

If the venue wants to increase the number of machines by fewer than 20, councils have no avenue by which they can object and more importantly, the community is not notified of the increase. So much for transparency.

Venue operators can then cut the council and community out of the loop by applying for 19 machines one year, 19 the next and another 19 the year after that.

At the moment the State Government oversees all applications for poker machines through the Office of Liquor and Gaming and as of last December, there were 42,290 machines at 1124 sites. It is argued that some of the revenue raised is used to assist sporting clubs. This is an attempt to justify an identified evil by claiming it can create a social positive and that the end, therefore, can justify the means.

If there is a more boring way of wasting money than standing in front of a poker machine and staring mindlessly at the screen in the absolute knowledge that the odds are stacked hopelessly against you, I’ve yet to find it. It’s a mugs’ game, pure and simple.

I wonder what the State Government would do if the black-throated finch was found to be nesting in poker machines? Now there’s a thought.

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