A bit off topic but Australia is a weird country. I visited in 2006 and was blown away how Americanized it all was for a country so far away and in the middle of so many other cultures. It was...
A bit off topic but Australia is a weird country. I visited in 2006 and was blown away how Americanized it all was for a country so far away and in the middle of so many other cultures. It was like a little American colony mixed with some sort of easy going attitude which makes no sense to me. I seems obvious that some bad people really have taken advantage of this country to turn it into what it is today. This story is a good example.
There is little political will for change in a country where the gambling industry donates millions of dollars to the major political parties and pays billions in taxes to states and territories. In New South Wales, home to half the country’s 200,000 pokies, the gaming commissioner was recently removed after pushing reforms that would have protected gamblers at the expense of the industry.
Australia is home to less than half a percent of the world’s population but has 20 percent of its pokies — and 80 percent of those located outside casinos. The result is a nation with the world’s worst average gambling losses: About $1,000 per adult each year. Opponents of gambling say pokies fuel suicides, domestic violence, insolvencies and financial crimes.
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The issue appears to be getting worse: According to one study, the share of Australians who have a gambling problem doubled over 10 years, to more than 1 percent.
The gambling industry says pokies are legal, regulated and enjoyed responsibly by millions of Australians. But when strict coronavirus lockdowns closed pubs, clubs and casinos, many addicts and their relatives were relieved.
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When the lockdowns were lifted, however, financial losses to the pokies soared to record highs. They now remain as strong as before the pandemic.
There is little political will for change in a country where the gambling industry donates millions of dollars to the major political parties and pays billions in taxes to states and territories. In New South Wales, home to half the country’s 200,000 pokies, the gaming commissioner was recently removed after pushing reforms that would have protected gamblers at the expense of the industry.
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Critics say Australia’s gambling industry has been resisting reforms for more than a decade. In 2010, Xenophon, who said he entered politics because of the damage he saw pokies cause in South Australia, and another independent lawmaker, Andrew Wilkie from Tasmania, pushed a gambling overhaul bill that would have required people to use cards with preset loss limits to play pokies. After a lobbying blitz, however, the requirement was removed from the legislation by the center-left Labor government before it passed, and the law was then repealed roughly a year later after a conservative Liberal-Nationals coalition came to office.
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The industry holds still more sway at the state level. In 2018, Tasmania’s branch of the Labor Party ran on a promise to remove pokies from pubs and clubs. But the industry launched a lobbying counteroffensive. Labor lost the election and has since done an about-face.
A bit off topic but Australia is a weird country. I visited in 2006 and was blown away how Americanized it all was for a country so far away and in the middle of so many other cultures. It was like a little American colony mixed with some sort of easy going attitude which makes no sense to me. I seems obvious that some bad people really have taken advantage of this country to turn it into what it is today. This story is a good example.
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