Pokie venues are starting to reopen across the country. For at-risk gamblers, this is a worrying time as they emerge from a long compulsory break from playing.
With perhaps months stuck at home due to coronavirus, gamblers may be tempted to engage more heavily in online betting. New regulations are urgently needed to restrict online bet sizes and credit card use.
How many happy gamblers, jobs and profits does it take to make up for the suicides, bankruptcies and domestic violence? Regulators must make cost-benefit guesstimates when considering applications.
Gambling operators are required by law to donate some of their revenue for charitable purposes. But a review of data in Victoria shows that charitable giving is actually far less than they claim.
Electronic gambling machines can be highly addictive, and are associated with very high rates of gambling harm. Many of the mechanisms of this potential for addiction are now becoming clearer.
Pokies, housing, hospitals and gun laws might have been the specific issues that dominated the campaign, but the decisive factor was Tasmanians’ enduring apprehension about minority government.
Nick Xenophon says the proposals encapsulated in his party’s gambling policy for the South Australian election are just the start of a wider push for reform.
The Tasmanian Liberal party is promoting gaming industry estimates that ‘around 5,000 jobs’ would be at risk if poker machines were removed from pubs and clubs in Tasmania. Are the estimates correct?
Research that studied the pokie risks gamblers were prepared to take after they held a live crocodile has been awarded one of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes.
Gambling has impacts on many aspects of life – including employment, income and wealth. The release of HILDA’s latest survey provides more evidence to help inform decisions on gambling policy.
In Tasmania, a changing cast of actors has colluded to grant extreme riches to a single family, extracted in large part from the state’s most disadvantaged citizens.
Allowing pokies to continue to be concentrated in Tasmania’s most stressed local areas will continue to cause preventable harm to tens of thousands of Tasmanians every year.