How can doctors possibly support this?
How can doctors possibly back a pub’s push for more pokies in exchange for gambling-generated funding, asks Eliza Barr. It’s a terrible indictment on our underfunded system.
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In western Sydney’s Vegas, they keep the glittering lights on with money prised from a community gripped by a gambling crisis that costs them hundreds of millions of dollars every single year.
The casino capital of Fairfield City in Sydney’s southwest gutted $248,675,735 from gamblers — vulnerable addicts among them — between December 2017 and June 2018, according to Liquor and Gaming NSW figures.
Now the local hospital has sold its soul to a cashed-up hotel dangling desperately needed funding in exchange for the hospital’s support for — unbelievably — more poker machines.
Fairfield Hospital’s paediatric medicine director has backed Fairfield Hotel’s application for seven more poker machines at their venue in return for a $503,000 donation.
Yes. A Sydney hospital has decided to support a nearby hotel venue so they can afford healthcare for local children. You almost can’t blame them. Fairfield Hospital desperately needs help.
In April 2018, 86 new mothers were incorrectly vaccinated for chickenpox as well as measles, mumps and rubella at Fairfield Hospital.
In September 2017, an ill 71-year-old woman walked home for two and a half hours from Fairfield Hospital after she was incorrectly discharged.
In August 2017, a mother shielded her terrified son as he awaited treatment for asthma, separated by a thin curtain from a screaming, drug-affected man because Fairfield Hospital does not have facilities to separate sick children and adults.
The hospital’s paediatric medicine director said Fairfield Hotel’s $503,000 donation would be spent on “much-needed medical equipment in the children’s wards to better service local families”.
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Between December 2017 and June 2018 the NSW government took a tidy $70,586,900 in tax from Fairfield City venues. Why can’t they pay for the upgrades?
New South Wales has the nation’s highest pokies expenditure but other suburban outposts around the country are still making devastating losses on gaming machines.
The City of Brimbank in Victoria, which has a below-average household income of $1263 per week, spent $134,141,671.85 between 2016 and 2017.
In South Australia, the Port Adelaide Enfield region has a below-average household income of $1141 per week while pokie operators pulled in $45,580,000 after tax between 2017 and 2018.
In January alone residents of Glenorchy in Tasmania spent $1,457,473.73 on pokies despite a below-average household income of $1019 per week.
In the same period Brisbane gamblers spent $4,1,962,560.22 on the pokies.
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Fairfield City is a brilliant, multicultural city of hardworking Australians that draws much of its strength and character from migrants and refugees who have made it their home.
But census figures also reveal Fairfield City has above-average unemployment and a below-average household income of $1222 with an average weekly rent of $350. Factor in bills, topping up your Opal card or your petrol, a flat tyre, that modest bottle of wine for the weekend — where does the money for pokies come from?
No one knows. But it doesn’t seem like anyone cares either.
Vulnerable people are routinely enabled to burn money they don’t have as some venues prey on their addiction to the desperate hope they can double their money, or just go home with something — anything — so there’s food on the table that week.
Meanwhile, the government just takes its tens of millions in tax and cheerfully invests it in a hospital or a tram on the right side of the Red Rooster Line.
So, if you’re west of Ashfield — forget it.
In Fairfield City, 78.3 per cent of residents have parents born overseas, which really means almost everyone there arrived from Vietnam or Iraq so the Lucky Country could prey on addicts to fund essential healthcare and make them travel in leaky tin can trains on the excruciating all-stops service to Leppington. You know, if a light breeze doesn’t shut down the network that day.
What does it say that the NSW government would rather let disadvantaged people destroy their lives to fund healthcare instead of allocating the necessary funds themselves?
It suggests they don’t care.
And that is utterly shameful.
You can’t see the glittering lights of Western Sydney’s Vegas in the corridors of power.
In state parliament’s chambers, you can’t see Western Sydney at all.
Originally published as How can doctors possibly support this?
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