One of the wedge issues which the rightist trashmedia is going to push in the upcoming NSW General Election this year, will be The Greens' policy of wanting to get rid of poker machines in New South Wales. This will be painted as bad under the guise of 'choice'. Second to this, they will paint the Labor Party as either being spineless or giving in to The Greens when they want to introduce measures to do with cashless gaming machines and the like. All the while they will play the larrikin card for the Liberal Party and say that they are protecting the right of the people to have a flutter.
This has already begun on 2GB where prize knave Ben Fordham, who has never even seen an original thought since he joined the radio station, has already solicited callers to drive home the point like nails in the wrists of the public. I have no doubt that the Murdochracy with the likes of Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny, will over the next few months, transform into evangelists for the gaming industry.
Let me make a diversion here and say that I take issue with the words 'gaming industry'. Games at table such as poker, vingt-et-un, pinochle, pai-gow et cetera are all games that involve some degree of skill. Watching the World Poker Tour on telly is the same in principle as watching other parlour games like Chess, Crokinhole, Bridge, 500 and what now. Poker machines are not games of skill at all but deliberately mindless diversions which have hidden processes behind the not very good video game, which are purely designed to extract monies from the marks who play them. Poker machines, much like the racing industry, exist for no other purpose to extract money from the marks, with their agreement. They are a step away from theft.
I remember the brief hoo-haa when for a very short period of time Aristorat Game Machines were the most valuable company in Australia. This was because of trading after their Initial Public Offer and the markets went mad for a period of about 36 hours. That madness was predicated on the knowledge that their sole product was making machines which are purely designed to extract monies from the marks who play them and the knowledge that the then Labor Government was about to release more gaming licences for the machines.
Now of course people with a more libertarian bent will put forward the knavish excuse that people are individuals with agency and should have the right to make decisions for themselves. This excuse is often put forward by abject knaves who stand to profit from the misery of other people. The hidden lie is that the actual costs of problem gambling are not borne by either those knaves or the companies which supply or own the machines but the families of problem gamblers and the community as a whole.
Problem gambling as causation does lead to increased domestic violence, homelessness, as well as co-adjacent issues like drug abuse. We know this. The purpose of law is the regulation, standardisation, and protection of society; the reduction of problem gambling has to do with the latter of those three and the Crown has an interest in the protection of society from itself because the Crown invariably ends up carrying the monetary cost.
I am simply not impressed by arguments to do with liberty, where rights being invoked are unlimited and unfettered and where the results of the exercise of that liberty are the misery and injury of others. It is reasonable that liberty has limits. If my right to swing my arm ends immediately before it comes in contact with your face, then why is it perfectly acceptable in these people's minds that the children of problem gamblers should become actual punching bags and end up in A&E? Why? Because these people have no conscience and if they do, they've already beaten it to death.
My suspicion is that the Labor Party won't adopt The Greens' proposal of banning poker machines because they have some kind of relationship with the knaves who own them. In other words, the Labor Party is too gutless to act decently. Of course the Liberal Party wouldn't care about decency; including if a child who had been kicked was left at their doorstep. Do I think I think the The Greens' policy is reasonable? Demonstrably, yes.
The decent and fair people of New South Wales are probably ignorant of the fact that 33% of all poker machines in the world, are in Australia. 50% of all poker machines in Australia are in New South Wales. Not only does the state of New South Wales have more poker machines than Nevada but we have more poker machines per capita than any other jurisdiction in the world.
I suppose that if we were to ban poker machines in New South Wales, then immediately both the pubs and clubs, the casinos, and the companies that supply them, would all cry 'blue murder' and demand compensation. My response to that would be to tell them to "Get Stuffed!". They've already been compensated many many many times over. That's why they had the machines in the first place. They've already stolen the food from peoples' tables, in some cases already stolen peoples' houses, and been the root cause of physical injury.
If your pub or club is so bereft of talent that you can not spin a profit from alcohol and food sales, then maybe you aught to think about what the purpose of your club is. Maybe there is a place for casinos but the actual prestige and glamour of those places, isn't from the rooms of sad people being microdosed on occasional adrenaline and endorphins as they win back pennycents from the dollarpounds they've already burned. Even Bond, James Bond, when he wasn't mysogenising his way across the world wasn't sitting in front of a poker machine.
I know that anecdote is not evidence but the nicest pubs and clubs that I've been in are those with no poker machines at all. This is probably due to the fact that the establishment in an effort to make you want to come back, has put effort into ambience. Then again, the nicest pub that I was ever in had a fireplace, leather couches, and a pub cat; so the idea of installing electronic jingle-jangle would have been an insult.
That's basically what poker machines are. They are an insult to the intelligence of the patrons, which are actively designed to be addictive, to extract monies from the marks who play them; with absolutely zero concern for the well-being of either the patron or their families or society. New South Wales should be embarrassed. The Greens' policy of banning poker machines is actually the decent and proper thing to do.
Aside:
The statement from the banking association that they were behind putting in measures to have cashless gaming machines, should not been seen as generous. What this means for them is that they are just as happy to withdraw their Automatic Teller Machines from venues because it means that they no longer have to pay the running costs of those Automatic Teller Machines.
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