The harm pokies cause is widespread and tends to affect those already under significant stress. $1 bets are a good first step toward reducing this harm.
Stephen Conroy is to head up a new gambling industry body, Responsible Wagering Australia.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The gambling industry certainly holds an attraction for former politicians. Perhaps it’s all that money, and the attraction of staying in the game – even if at a peripheral level.
How do myths about poker machines develop?
AAP/Dan Peled
While it is up for debate as to whether there are questions to be answered about various industry tactics and links to politicians, what isn’t a secret is how poker machines actually work.
Sports betting in Australia has been growing rapidly in recent years – all that advertising seems to be paying off.
AAP/Julian Smith
Polls suggest that Nick Xenophon’s team will win a bag of Senate seats. Along with a re-elected Andrew Wilkie, and the Greens, will there be enthusiasm for gambling reform in the next parliament?
Nick Xenophon and NXT candidate for the seat of Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie, at a meeting in the Adelaide Hills.
Pat Hutchens/TC
The Nick Xenophon Team is to this election what the Palmer United Party was to the 2013 one. It is potentially the ‘next big new thing’ in the Senate.
According to new research, the more money people lose gambling, the greater their risk of developing gambling problems – even at relatively low levels of losses.
AAP/Julian Smith
Law firm Maurice Blackburn that plans to use Australian consumer law to argue that poker machine operators are engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct to trick gamblers into using poker machines.
The level of contributions made by clubs to community purposes is low as a proportion of poker machine revenue.
Michael Coghlan
Some clubs provide genuine benefits to their communities. Unfortunately, clubs have developed significant poker machine dependency – an average of about 60% of total revenue.
Recent changes to gambling regulation in Queensland will allow for a rapid expansion of the industry.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
The Queensland government has recently implemented changes to poker machine regulation under the banner of “red tape reduction”. Some of these are relatively minor at first glance; others have more obvious…
The Cameron government’s reported willingness to curb some of the excesses of electronic casino games in betting shops (fixed odds betting terminals) is to be welcomed. Yet without far-reaching reforms…
Crown Limited, the casino empire majority owned by James Packer, earned $490 million in profit in the last financial year – no wonder he’s laughing.
AAP/Dean Lewins
The Conversation is running a series, Class in Australia, to identify, illuminate and debate its many manifestations. Here, Francis Markham and Martin Young explain why the deregulation of gambling in…
It is easy – and inaccurate – to suggest that Aboriginal gambling is just one more problem associated with remote Indigenous communities that needs to be fixed.
Martin Young
“Aboriginal gambling” has become something of a hot-button issue in recent years. A number of academic research articles have documented the “risk factors” for Aboriginal people that increase their likelihood…
It’s hardly surprising the Coalition would baulk at costly regulation in the gambling industry.
Flickr/Marionzetta
The future of Australia’s pokies pre-commitment scheme – which enables players to set a limit on how much they’re prepared to lose – is in doubt, with Labor likely to support the Coalition’s move to repeal…
The Coalition’s policy to combat problem gambling is treatment focused, excludes potential online competitors and makes no funding commitment. What influenced its creation?
AAP/Dan Peled
The Coalition has released its policy “to help problem gamblers” under that very title. If the betting markets are any guide, the Coalition is poised to win government on September 7, so the likelihood…
Despite stated intentions otherwise, are poker machines at James Packer’s planned second Sydney casino at Barangaroo inevitable?
AAP/Dean Lewins
When is a casino not a casino? According to NSW premier Barry O’Farrell, who last week approved James Packer’s Crown Limited bid to establish Sydney’s second casino, a casino isn’t a casino without pokies…
Pokies- rather than individuals - form the backbone of Australia’s gambling problem.
AAP/Dan Peled
Institutions that make big money out of gambling – such as governments, casinos, clubs and pubs – are fond of telling us how much they care about problem gambling. Clubs Australia (the peak body for the…
Gambling tax reform should be a part of a gambling harm minimisation tax package.
Gambling provides Australian state governments with an average of 7.3% of their own taxes, about $5147 million, according to ABS data for 2010-11. Victoria (10.8%) and New South Wales (8.6%) earn above…
Evidence shows most people did not gamble away their carbon tax compensation, despite media claims at the time.
AAP
Like many policy issues in Australia, the public debate and media coverage on the relationship between government payments and spending at electronic gaming machines or ‘pokies’ is sensationalist and exaggerated…