Sonia always comes to the same conclusion. Her husband’s death was avoidable

Was it one last roll of the dice? An audacious bid to hit the jackpot before he made good on the promise he had made to his wife, to hand over the family purse strings?

How much of Gary Van Duinen’s decision to play the pokies on May 30, 2018, was guided by a desire to soak up the royal treatment he received as a Diamond member of his club’s rewards program for one last time? How much had he lost when optimism turned to desperation?

And did he wish in his final moments that he could go back to 4.50pm the previous day when he walked into Dee Why RSL, and choose instead to stay home?

Joy Van Duinen’s son, Gary, who took his own life in bushland after an all-night gambling spree at Dee Why RSL.Credit: Janie Barrett

Sonia Van Duinen has thought a lot about her husband’s state of mind in the five years since he took his life after a 13-hour gambling binge. She always comes back to the same place: this was an avoidable death. Yet five years later, little progress has been made to prevent the same thing happening again. And she is sceptical whether the gambling policies being offered by either party at the NSW state election will help people like Gary.

“I’m probably angrier now because nothing has changed,” Sonia said. “There’s still someone dying every day from suicide because of gambling. The club got a slap on the wrist.”

Gary lost $6000 in his final gambling spree, mostly at Dee Why RSL, where his prolific gambling had qualified him for Diamond membership of the rewards program, with benefits such as VIP “red carpet” entry, a priority paging service, free parking and heavily discounted food and drinks. He had put more than $3.4 million through the club’s poker machines over the previous two years and lost nearly $230,000.

For Dee Why RSL, Gary’s death would lead to a $200,000 fine imposed by the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority, as well as new conditions on its gaming licence: a permanent responsible gambling marshal to monitor players in the gaming room, a register of players who showed signs of addictive gambling and a third-party exclusion policy that allowed family members to ban them from the gaming room.

But to Gary’s family, the measures seemed inadequate to address the problem of gambling addiction at Dee Why RSL, let alone the broader one raging across the state. Joy Van Duinen, Gary’s mother, does not understand why third-party exclusion is not mandatory across all clubs, pubs and casinos.

“Everything Dee Why RSL did was wrong,” Joy said. “They ran the club like a casino, and they got away with a $200,000 fine. They would make that back in a day. I’m not against pokies, not at all, but the harm they do, I just think somebody has to step up.”

Sonia would later learn that the employee appointed as the responsible gambling marshal was the same manager who three weeks earlier had raised his hands when she begged him to ban Gary from the gaming room. He said there was nothing he could do unless Gary decided to stop.

“My husband is going to kill himself one of these days,” she recalled screaming at the man. “He just smiled at me as I walked away, leaving my husband behind.”

Dee Why RSL did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Both major parties have put up gambling policies as part of their election platforms. The government wants to introduce a cashless gaming card with self-determined spending limits, which can be altered once a week, and improved data collection from the machines. It will also reduce the number of poker machines in NSW by 2000.

Labor has committed to a 500-machine trial of cashless gaming, a ban on political donations from clubs with poker machines, reduced cash feed-in limits, a reduction in the number of machines and a ban on poker machine advertising outside all venues.

Joy said neither plan did enough to address gambling addictions, particularly among young people who might start by gaming online and graduate to gambling with real money. The glaring solution, in her view, would be a ban on gambling advertising.

“The cashless card is to stop money laundering,” Joy said. “If all this money is being laundered, the government isn’t getting any money from that.”

Sonia said a cashless card would not have helped Gary, particularly without a mandatory spending limit. He would have given himself a high gambling limit, blown through it in a single day, and then given himself a higher one the next week. “Towards the end it was just chasing that big win,” she said.

Gary Van Duinen played the pokies at Dee Why RSL for hours before he died. Credit: Janie Barrett

The Van Duinen family had long been regulars at the Dee Why RSL, where they enjoyed catching up for 10-pin bowling followed by a meal and a few drinks, and possibly a flutter on the poker machines. But everything changed after Gary had two big wins, nine days apart in June 2016, resulting in a $65,000 windfall.

“Then it was all the time,” Sonia said. “Practically every day he was in the club, chasing it again. He wouldn’t get home until 4 o’clock in the morning.”

Soon he was putting so much money through the machines that he became a Diamond member of the club’s loyalty program, an exclusive group of about 250 high rollers who were entitled to VIP parking, private “red carpet” entry to the gaming room, personalised hosting and priority paging service.

The private entry allowed them to bring friends into the club without signing in, some of whom have since qualified for diamond or platinum gaming status in their own right. “We sort of introduced them to the scene and now they’re probably just as bad as Gary was in the day,” Sonia said. “I feel so guilty about that.

“He never had to pay for a drink because of all the points he racked up through gambling. He used to shout us all. He would take us out for dinner and we thought at least we’re getting something back for all those thousands of dollars.”

But then she found a noose in the backyard, and she knew that things were serious.

Three weeks before Gary died it was Mother’s Day, and he did not get home until 5am. The couple’s 18-year-old son had also been out the night before. Sonia realised she could wait all day for her husband to get up, and then he would be off to the club again, so she packed her car and drove to her own mother’s house. She swore she would not return until he fixed himself up.

Sonia Van Duinen: “Practically every day he was in the club, chasing it again.”Credit: James Brickwood

On May 30, Gary called Sonia to say he had decided to give her control of the family finances. It was all the encouragement she needed to come home. But her mother had just had surgery, so she said she would return in two days. That afternoon, he went to the club.

“He seemed so excited that I was coming home, and it was that night he just gambled, gambled, gambled, gambled, gambled, gambled, gambled. I think he thought when I came home I would realise what he had done. He probably would have thought, ‘Sonia is going to be so disappointed’.

“He’d told me he’d stopped, but he forgot I could see the bank statements.”

Gary’s body was discovered in bushland near Narrabeen Lakes six days after he went missing. It was only afterwards that Sonia discovered his trail of debt.

Crisis support can be found at Lifeline: (13 11 14 and lifeline.org.au), the Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467 and suicidecallbackservice.org.au) and beyondblue (1300 22 4636 and beyondblue.org.au)

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