(Josh Nicholas’s post from the GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA on 10 January 2023.)
Western
Australia shows the harm poker machines are doing to the rest of the Australia:
Pokies are banned in the state everywhere except casinos – and it has the
lowest rates of gambling losses per capita (and suicide) in Australia to show
for it.
While
clubs in New South Wales and Victoria have been embroiled in acrimonious
battles in recent months over their reliance on poker machine revenue, there is
one state where they are banned – and where gambling losses are much lower.
Since
1985, pokies have been banned in WA's pubs and clubs, with their presence
limited solely to the Crown Casino. This provides us with some geographic
variation in Australia on gambling, if we consider WA to be a `pokie-less'
equivalent of the eastern states.
In Western Australia poker machines are allowed only in the casino. It has the lowest rates of gambling losses per capita in the country, and reported symptoms of problematic gambling are higher in the other states, experts say.
“Because
[poker machines] are concentrated in just one venue in a casino in Perth, then
people are not as exposed in Western Australia to … what is really the most
harmful form of gambling that we’ve got in Australia,” says Dr Angela Rintoul,
a senior research fellow in public health at Federation University.
There
were just over 2,400 machines in Western Australia in 2018-19 – the last
non-pandemic year for which comprehensive data is available – which works out
at less than one per 1,000 residents. In the same year there were more than
91,000 machines in NSW, more than 10 times as many per capita.
The
huge discrepancy in the number of gaming machines is reflected in gambling
expenditure. Total gambling expenditure per capita in Western Australia is less
than what is lost per capita on poker machines alone in NSW, and has been for
more than a decade.
Rintoul
says that unlike wagering or lotteries, which each make up a significant chunk
of Western Australia’s per capita gambling expenditure, poker machines are
“designed to create addiction”.
“This
machine is the perfect kind of money trap,” she says. “Wagering is still a
problem, obviously, but [the problem with machines] is a combination of the way
that machine is able to trigger the release of dopamine through these kinds of
tricks that has gone inside it, alongside the widespread availability in most
of Australia.”
The
productivity commission has previously found that about 85% of people who
experience gambling harm report electronic machines as the main problem. But
experts say there isn’t much research on the differences in gambling harm
between states.
Dr Francis Markham, a research fellow at the Australian National University, estimates from unpublished research that the rest of Australia reports 1.6 times more problem gambling symptoms than WA, based on the latest Hilda survey.
He
says it appears the money that would have been gambled if poker machines were
more common in Western Australia is not going to other forms of gambling, as
research suggests there is “far from a one-to-one substitution effect, if any”
between forms of gambling (contrary to claims around the proposed introduction
of the cashless gaming card in NSW).
Gambling
makes up almost half the revenue of social clubs across the country, and up to
17% for pubs and clubs, according to recent IbisWorld reports. Because of
Western Australia’s restrictions on gaming in clubs, the figures are likely to
be higher than this in the other states.
Rintoul’s
previous research has shown that poker machines in the states where they are
more widespread are disproportionately found in areas of greater disadvantage.
Guardian Australia has also found disproportionate gaming machine expenditure
at RSLs in more disadvantaged areas of Victoria. “The industry knows where
they’ll make money,” Rintoul says.
Nor
does the lack of poker machines in WA seem to have reduced the viability of
clubs significantly. NSW does have a disproportionately large share compared
with other states, but the number of clubs in Western Australia is only
slightly lower than what would be expected, given its population.
About
40% of social clubs are in NSW, which has just over 30% of the population,
according to IbisWorld. Western Australia has 8.2% of the clubs and 10% of the
population. “We’ve allowed these really high-intensity machines to be part of
our social fabric inside suburban and regional area, especially in NSW,”
Rintoul says.
