Excellent overview of our State and Federal Governments’ addiction to pokies plus new research showing “increased gaming (on pokies) leads to increased crime”.

As numerous studies have already proven, including Anglicare Tasmania’s soul-searching report on gambling addiction “Nothing Left to Lose” early this year,  there is no disputing the social distress and financial damage caused by poker-machine addiction.

But what about the link between pokies and crime? A new Victorian study has found:

“strong and robust evidence” of a significant link between gaming expenditure and crime, in particular “income-generating” crimes such as theft, robbery, fraud and handling stolen goods.

only drug use or drug addiction had a stronger link to causing crime than poker machines.

“the causal relationship runs from increased gaming to increased crime, rather than the other way round.”

It followed earlier studies that have proved:

Adults spend more money on the pokies in poorer and less educated suburbs and towns.

Communities with a high rate of volunteering – and presumably a better community feel  have less money lost on poker machines.

More poker-machine venues and the more pokies per suburb results in more money spent per adult.

The response of Tasmanian, Victorian and Federal Governments is appalling.

Just last month, Treasurer Michael Aird claimed in parliamentary estimates hearings that it was impossible for the state to alone impose the $1 bet limit on poker machines recommended by the Productivity Commission to reduce losses by gamblers.

Yet the Federal Government has said it thinks the issue is one for the states to address.

 In this year’s State Budget Tasmania will receive $92million from gambling taxes from a total state taxation revenue base of $875million.

The federal Labor Party is complicit in the failure to tackle pokies spending and the corollary harm. It directly owns and runs four major club venues filled with pokies in Canberra, including the vast Canberra Labor Club with its 60,000 members.
The money they plough into poker machines is directly paying for some of the Labor Party’s lavish advertising during the current federal election.
Small wonder that so little is being done about the problem.

But if crime is directly related to poker machines vanquishing the oft-heard arguments by industry players that it is just another entertainment choice surely the State Government cannot twiddle its thumbs much longer? 

Are the police costs of tackling and  investigating crimes irrefutably caused by poker-machine addiction now outweighing the tax benefits returned by gambling to the state’s coffers?

Add in too the cost of caring for offenders who end up in jails because of their poker-machine addictions. Or children who end up in state care because of family breakdown caused  by uncontrolled gambling.
But even that simplistic financial cost-benefit  approach  ignores the endless pain and suffering to law-abiding citizens who have their homes broken into, their bags snatched or their faces bashed in a snap robbery because of  the lure of poker machines.
And it fails to even start to calculate the impact on society of broken marriages, lost jobs, child neglect, mental anguish and suicide.

See Buck the pokie habit by Sue Neales  and  Explosive report links pokies to jump in crime.