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.
Australia has one poker machine for every 114 people.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Australians seem uniquely vulnerable to the siren call of poker machines. Here are 15 reasons that suggest why this is so, what impact it has, and what can be done about it.
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.
Why are pokies so attractive? And why do we spend so much on them?
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
The basic characteristics of pokies, combined with constantly refined game features, provide a stimulus to the brain that, in many cases, leads to a form of addiction.