In short:
- Queensland’s LNP opposition wants to increase the cap on poker machines that can operate at clubs with more than two premises.
- The gaming machine cap for a club licensee with three or more sites is 500, but the LNP wants to lift that to 700.
What’s next?
- The LNP is taking the policy to the looming October state election, arguing that the proposal would benefit smaller clubs facing closure.
… Don’t these statements contradict each other?
-> Applies only to businesses with more than two premises
-> benefits “smaller clubs”
???
Also I love the related stories:
jfc every single thing they come out saying they want to do is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
And they’re going to win, too.
Currently struggling with someone close and their gambling addiction. I’m too biased to have a fair opinion here, but I frankly think Japan has a better no gambling policy. Sure you can still do it, with extra steps, but fuck, gun laws fixed mass shootings, and anti-gambling laws would reduce financial suicide.
The problem with my close relative is that the gambling problem is their coping mechanism for a bigger mental health issue, but convincing a doctor that there’s a problem is fucking hard.
So they get upset, throw a tantrum, storm the pokies and try to end it all a spin at a time. All because 10 years ago they would do it with $200 and have a good laugh about it either way and walk out. But the inhibition is gone.
So we’ve banned them from the pubs and clubs, but there’s always somewhere else they can go.
Can’t get help, can’t block the financial suicide. And I’m not a relative and their family is part of the core issue so no help there.
Anyway thanks for making it so hard Australia. Why not make it even bigger.
So we’ve banned them from the pubs and clubs
Sorry, did you mean “them” as in your person, or pokies? Because honestly, banning pokies from being anywhere other than casinos (after all, Australia is currently almost the only place you’ll ever find pokies outside a casino—with our measly 0.3% of the world’s population, we have 75% of its non-casino pokies, and 18% of all the pokies) would be one of the biggest things we could do to improve things. That, plus banning the advertising of gambling like we banned smoking ads decades ago—especially in connection with popular sporting events.
Unfortunately for your person yeah, the most important thing we can do is to prevent people getting addicted in the first place, because it becomes much more difficult once someone already has an addiction. Because yeah, you can try to prevent them accessing it, but someone with an addiction-fed determination will find a way around it. We need to get better at treating it as a serious medical problem, but that’s a much harder problem to solve.
Yes, “them” was meant to identify my person. I know without the pokies another addiction probably would have been in its place, it’s just I can’t help but wonder how many other addictions can lose tens of thousands of dollars in a weekend bender.
It’s horrible, but after 12 months of this I sometimes find myself thinking if suicide would have been kinder to the spouse and the rest.
Mostly I wish the mental health route was just easier. Nearly nobody likes to talk about it since it is seen like a failing of the character, not a health issue like a virus. Don’t dare say anything at work. The GP simply says “well don’t do that then”. And friends evaporate at the mention of it. Family are often the cause of it.
Unfortunately when it comes to gambling neither side seems to want any reduction. Sure the libs are saying they’ll allow more pokies, but under Labor we got a huge fucking new casino for “tourism” because the thing that would really set Brisbane apart is a big casino - like every other state capital. They even built that casino at the same time that the casino operators in other states were being found to facilitate money laundering.
Government bribery is by far the best investment any large company can make. The ROI is incredible.
The Greens certainly do. At the Brisbane City Council elections earlier this year, they proposed a ban on renewing leases to Council facilities to any organisation with pokies, and they had a proposal for shutting down one of our two horse racing venues (each literally right next to each other) to put in parkland, housing, and public facilities.
Their Victorian state policy includes an increase of tax on pokies to 65%, a Royal Commission into Crown, and a much wider ban on advertising of gambling.
Yes, but the Greens are rarely in a position to make decisions.
Pokies should be illegal jfc
Good soundtrack while you read the article:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4nJOQA3ZP3M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Lewis_(bassist)
Andrew Joseph Lewis (16 June 1966 – 12 February 2000) was the original bassist of Australian band The Whitlams.
He battled a gambling addiction and committed suicide in February 2000, aged 33, after losing an entire week’s pay in a poker machine.
“Blow Up the Pokies”, co-written by Tim Freedman (The Whitlams) not long before Lewis’ death, is a comment on the destruction that Freedman saw in Lewis’ life because of his gambling. It was awaiting release as a single at the time.
This sounds like a really good policy idea, especially if you consider the positives:
- Gambling lobby has more money for LNP donations
Vs the very very insignificant negatives:
- More bankruptcy
- More suicides
- More unemployed poor people to villanise
Absolutely genius, can’t wait for their other great policies like:
- making preferencing optional so it’s easier for them to win (which they announced after winning the BCC election which has optional preferencing),
- rolling over like a dog for a belly rub to allow nuclear to be built in QLD to satisfy Peter Dutton’s wet dreams,
- naming a railway line after Queen Elizabeth ii (not entirely unreasonable but there are probably people that did more for QLD to name it after),
- giving those poor defenceless, internationally-owned coal miners a break, because they have spent too much saturating our advertising with cries for help and that money could be much better spent on LNP donations
- discontinuing the government’s renewables projects to erode confidence from the sector, afterall they don’t donate to the LNP
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Queensland’s LNP opposition has promised to allow clubs with more than two premises to operate hundreds more poker machines if it wins the next state election.
Shadow Attorney-General Tim Nicholls described the LNP’s proposal as a “commonsense plan” that would throw a lifeline to small community-owned clubs.
“The Queensland government has committed to a club compact, but also has to take into account the needs of the entire sector while ensuring gambling harm minimisation initiatives.”
“Fundamentally across the state, there is only a finite number of club venues that will have a requirement to go to the incremental cap of 700 gaming machines,” he said.
Alliance for Gambling Reform interim chief executive Martin Thomas said his organisation was opposed to the proposal to increase the cap on gaming machines at clubs with multiple sites.
Mr Thomas said the Alliance for Gambling Reform wanted state governments to introduce a mandatory cashless card with pre-commitments for poker machine users.
The original article contains 688 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
