Why the pokies keep beating Australians

Australia suffers the greatest losses and harm from gambling per adult in the world. Most Australians want reform, regular surveys show. So why is it so impossible?

In short: because of the political muscle and massive wealth of the poker machine lobby, which is responsible for more than half of Australia’s gambling losses.

I’ve been closely watching this drama (sometimes more farce) play out since 1994, when I was pastor at St Kilda Baptist and practising as a solicitor running the church’s poverty law service. A happily married middle-aged woman with three teenage children came into my legal office and asked me to represent her.

Pokies had recently been introduced into Victoria; this woman had started playing socially with friends, then found herself addicted and was soon going back to play on her own. She hid her losses from her husband and ended up stealing more than $60,000 from her employer to cover them. She was sacked and criminally charged; I represented her in court and she was sentenced to four years’ jail. (Today, magistrates know pokies are built for addiction and they treat such cases differently. But not back in 1994.)

I visited her in Tarrengower women’s prison. I was struck by one question: how does a middle-aged mother in a happy marriage who has no priors – not even a speeding ticket – end up in prison? What is the true nature of these machines that transform a law-abiding citizen into an offender now serving a four-year sentence? And why have these machines proliferated to almost every suburb and rural town?

This story has been repeated with a thousand variations in families across Australia in the decades since. There have been many brave attempts at reform by governments, and each time, this predatory vested interest – which enjoys state licences and earns super-profits from its addictive machines – has defeated their efforts.

The history of pokies dominating and defeating our politicians is worth detailing. It’s a bitter lesson in thwarting democracy.

The first chapter was in 2010 when Julia Gillard as prime minister introduced plans for a mandatory precommitment card on all pokies as a federal initiative. It had been recommended by two Productivity Commission inquiries into gambling, in 1999 and 2010. It was essentially what we today call the mandatory cashless card and it has been in operation in many European countries for years. It requires a punter to lock in their chosen losses before sitting in front of a hypnotic dopamine-releasing machine with its sounds of near jackpots and near misses that encourage users to feed it more cash and chase their losses.

Morally, sociologically and politically, the way forward on pokies reform is blindingly clear, and our failure to take the necessary steps year after year is a blight on our national character … This issue is the equivalent of the United States’ failure to deal with their gun problem.

The Productivity Commission revealed that Australia has 20 per cent of the world’s pokies and, even more astonishingly, nearly 75 per cent of the world’s pokies in clubs and pubs. In the rest of the world, most pokies are found in casinos. It is accessibility that explains why the losses are so great here, and the social devastation that flows from it. Postcodes with no poker machines were associated with 30 per cent fewer domestic-violence assaults when compared with postcodes with a high concentration of pokies, a 2016 Australian study found.

The Gillard reforms were viciously opposed by the clubs and the Australian Hotels Association (AHA) in a very well-funded campaign they dubbed the “unAustralian” campaign: it was unAustralian, Big Brother, nanny state to require a card. It’s easy to understand why they would run this mother of all scare campaigns – because 63 cents of every dollar going through their machines comes from someone who is addicted. Their business model is absolutely built on addiction. Even worse, it is built on the backs of those who can least afford it – most pokies are in the poorest postcodes, transferring wealth from the vulnerable to the massively rich captains of the gambling industry. It is ugly, regressive and unjust.

Gillard backed down and the pokies lobby crowed.

Next was the Tasmanian election of 2018. Then state opposition Labor leader Rebecca White went to the election promising the removal of all pokies, except from Tasmanian casinos. The Liberals (with Hospitality Tasmania) opposed the policy and the AHA, Clubs NSW and the mainland pokies industry funded their campaign. Though only 30 per cent of Tasmanian pubs had pokies, they insisted that the state’s pubs would be ruined. The Liberal leader, Will Hodgman, was able to outspend Labor 10 to one with mainland pokies money and won the election with a clear majority.

In the 2023 New South Wales election, then premier Dominic Perrottet promised to introduce the cashless card after the NSW Crime Commission found billions of dollars in dirty money going through the state’s pokies. He was supported by the police commissioner, the NSW Crime Commission, the NSW Council of Social Service, the secretary of Unions NSW, Mark Morey, and the NSW Health Union, the Australian Medical Association, and every health body in the state.

Following a now predictable pattern, Clubs NSW and the AHA backed and funded Labor in that election. Why? Because then opposition leader Chris Minns promised only a trial before the election. Minns kept his election promise and had a trial, which was assessed by an independent panel as successful. It found the technology for the cashless card worked and could link all NSW’s 100,000 pokies. But the pokies lobby declared it a failure, saying that low take-up was because the punters didn’t like it. The venues testing the cashless card in fact subverted the trial by saying to punters, “Don’t bother with a card, as you can still play these other pokies using cash.” The trial was to determine how the technology worked and how it could be rolled out to all NSW pokies – not whether the punters liked it. To test that would be like trialling plain packaging with smokers to determine whether they liked it before introducing it. Of course they would not.

So the AHA and Clubs NSW dishonestly declared the trial a failure due to low take-up, and Minns shelved it. After three premiers and 12 years in power, the Liberals were highly unlikely to win that election. Yet the expected massive majority for Labor did not eventuate, and it was remarkable that the Minns government won so narrowly – I would argue, largely due to the public appetite for pokies reform and the cashless card.

In a remarkable reversal in Tasmania, Liberal treasurer Michael Ferguson took on Hospitality Tasmania and introduced the regulation for a cashless card. HT turned on him and soon he was finished as a minister. In the most recent Tasmanian election, just a few months ago, neither of the major parties mentioned the card or gambling reform. Lesson learnt: you cannot take on the muscle of the industry and expect to win. Yet, encouragingly, the many independents elected were all committed to pokies reform.

And so to Victoria. In one of former premier Daniel Andrews’ last policy announcements, he promised the state would lead Australia with carded play and mandatory precommitments. Despite the best efforts of the former minister for casino, gaming and liquor regulation, Melissa Horne, this reform has run off-track in timing and intention. Behind the scenes, the AHA has threatened a huge campaign against Labor if the measure is not defeated. Their preferred “reform” – facial recognition, with data kept by the industry, along with non-binding limits on the card – is now being tested.

This trial is another example of the pokies lobby getting what it wants at the expense of common sense, evidence and ordinary Australians. The royal commission forced Crown pokies to introduce carded play and it has worked well for the past 18 months. All pokies in Victoria are linked – including Crown’s – under the YourPlay system, but outside Crown’s almost 2700 pokies, its use is currently voluntary, with predictably low uptake. Nonetheless, this system would allow cashless cards with mandatory limits to be introduced tomorrow, if Labor had the political will.

So why are we trialling facial recognition? Because the industry wants it. It allows them to harvest and keep all the data, then go on doing damage and reaping super-profits – it’s like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. It is why the Alliance for Gambling Reform has withdrawn its support for the trial in Victoria. As with the Minns playbook, this is just defeat by a thousand cuts while pretending to the public it is doing some reform. Many Labor MPs know this and are speaking up in caucus because their poorer electorates have the most pokies and suffer the greatest social damage.

Morally, sociologically and politically, the way forward on pokies reform is blindingly clear, and our failure to take the necessary steps year after year is a blight on our national character.

I’ve been campaigning for these reforms for 30 years now, as a pastor, a lawyer, an Australian and an advocate. I’m compelled by my faith to see “justice roll down like a mighty river” in place of greed and the ruin of families. I’m compelled as a citizen. This issue is the equivalent of the United States’ failure to deal with their gun problem: we criticise them for so many guns in the community but fail to recognise the plank in our own eye. And I’m compelled as a voter and activist to hope that our politicians have the courage to put people ahead of profit and finally stand up to the pokies lobby. 

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 13, 2025 as "The plank in our eye".