The Prime Minister and the Federal Cabinet have scrapped problem gambling reform, instead turning to a model of 'voluntary' pre-commitment that independent trials (and common sense) have shown to be completely ineffective. If the Prime Minister chooses to break her promise and trash reform, either by scrapping it all together or delaying it beyond the next election, thousands more lives could be destroyed just for political expediency. Can you chip in to our rapid response advertising campaign so that we stop this backdown before the Government makes their final decision? --
Please note: An email from GetUp member Clelia Koch is below. We are passing this email on to you and your details have not been shared.
It’s a tough time of year for my family. My beloved son-in-law, who was addicted to pokies, hung himself on Australia Day in 2008, leaving behind twins aged four years, as well as a six-year old daughter. His addiction to poker machines had taken most of his wages for years and he had borrowed heavily from loan sharks to cover up his heavy losses. We had no idea. When I speak to people about my family tragedy, most try to comfort me by saying they also know of marriage breakdowns and the loss of homes as a result of mortgage payments being secretly diverted into pokies. But this doesn’t comfort me. It breaks my heart.
After thinking the government was finally going to do something real to help problem gamblers, today I'm hearing some very distressing news. The Prime Minister is considering caving in to the powerful hotels lobby, by trying to get away with ‘voluntary pre-commitment’ instead. That would mean gamblers choosing whether to set a limit on how much they’ll spend in one go. Speaking from experience I can tell you that there's nothing voluntary about addiction, and while this policy may be more politically convenient, it won’t do anybody any good.
Can you join me and click here to donate to GetUp's campaign in defence of real reform? There’s a newspaper ad blitz ready to go tomorrow if we all chip in today.
They say pokie machines are the ‘crack cocaine’ of gambling because they're designed to be so addictive. For someone like my son-in-law, their effect can be devastating. These machines can swallow more than $1000 hour, and Australia has more of them than any other country on earth. No wonder gamblers in Australia lose $12 billion this way every year.
Meanwhile, experts will tell you that voluntary pre-commitment, the cop-out the Government are considering right now, has been studied for years. Studies by three state governments and the Productivity Commission all found the same thing: it will absolutely fail because it won't help the people who need it most, which is exactly why the clubs are willing to allow it. As someone who has seen problem gambling and its devastating effects up close, I agree with the experts that the best real-world solution is to limit gamblers’ ability to lose so much in one sitting. The vast majority of recreational gamblers won’t be affected at all – but for those who do need help, limiting bets to $1 or capping total losses at $120 an hour per machine (instead of $1000!) will save jobs, homes, families and even lives.
Can you join me in putting a message in the papers tomorrow: we won't buy this phoney reform. Problem gamblers and the families who love them need real help now.
http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/pokies-reform/voluntary-pre-commitment...
Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you. It is my most sincere hope that together, we will prevent other families from experiencing the pain that my family must endure every day.
Clelia Koch
GetUp member
Comments
Hell bent on blackmailing the Government
maybe if Wilkie was not so hell bent on blackmailing the Government he might have had something decent on the table by now.
Apologist for a traitorous government
There you go again, Noel, apologising for a gang of thugs and wafflers who do not see people's pain, be it the pain of Aborigines, refugees or gambling-smashed families. A government dead-scared of any lobby with money and clout that comes along. Why would Wilkie blackmail? Personal vendetta? His pokies drive is in the national interest, or do you disagree with that?
If it were up to me, I would junk every single poker machine in the country and ban any new ones being installed.
Wouldn't that cause an entertaining circus in Canberra!
Noel, you love your Labor party. Many of us would also like to but can't stomach this backroom-putschist-driven mob now at the top.
The only way to serve your love of the party is to criticise it until it remakes itself, even if it means pitching them out of office for a while to make them rethink themselves.
Libor can't be that much worse than Laberal.
Laberal is already sucking up to the same lobbies that Libor would.
Labor has accomplished many good things in the past 4 years
Wilkie is like a child, "If they don't do this I'm taking my bat and ball and going home..." I make criticism when I see it. As for pokie reform, I'm all for it. Maybe if those also in favour of poker reform could agree and present a unified front to Labour they would have something substantial to work with. As it is there are so many ideas being throne around that no-one seems to know what they stand for anymore. i agree, melt them down and turn them all into washing machines for the poor. Absolutely no argument there. My local pub (when I drank) went to the dogs the moment it opened a TAB there. Gambling is a great bane upon society. I'm just tired of Wilkie's all or nothing approach. And this Libour and Laberal thing is just stupid. There is a marked difference between Liberal and Labour. That is why Wilkie's approach is so wrongheaded. Does he imagine that he would get anywhere in talks with Tony Abbott? If you think Labour is that bad then that is your right, but I see many good things that Labour Has accomplished in the past four years, and I look forward to the things that are going to be delivered over the next two. Wilkie has not earned or received my allegiance, and there are many things I may wish for Labour to do, but really, that is our job, to convince the people to embrace real reform in society, we need to change the hearts and minds of people, and THEN real change will become possible.
What has Labor accomplished?
x
Community coalition launched poker machine reform campaign
Update: Minutes ago an unprecedented community coalition launched a campaign to push for poker machine reform.
The Stop the Loss Coalition, of which GetUp is a founding member, is a community campaign bringing together religious, civil society and consumer groups to counter Clubs Australia's aggressively misleading $40 million anti-reform campaign.
Politicians are deciding their next steps right now. That's why we need to come together and raise an additional $50,000 so we'll be able to start the distribution of one million letters direct to voters this weekend. This is our chance to turn the same tactic that Clubs Australia has been using on its head. Can you donate $15, $25 or $50 right now to take on the pokie profiteers and fight for real reform?
The Prime Minister and the Federal Cabinet are considering whether to scrap problem gambling reform, instead turning to a model of 'voluntary' pre-commitment that independent trials (and common sense) have shown to be completely ineffective. If the Prime Minister chooses to break her promise and trash reform, either by scrapping it all together or delaying it beyond the next election, thousands more lives could be destroyed just for political expediency. Can you chip in to our rapid response advertising campaign so that we stop this backdown before the Government makes their final decision?
This may be our last chance to achieve reform that will save lives, and stop tragedies like the one GetUp member Clelia Koch’s family experienced (see above).
Thanks for fighting back.
Erin for the GetUp team
One of the more purile issues a government has to consider
Well it is apparent Labour did not have sufficient support for pokie reform, and now Wilkie has chosen to not vouchsafe supply or a vote of confidence in the Government. he has made negotiations difficult in the past and the Government will find it easier to negotiate without him in the future. If he really wants to throw his lot in with Mad Abbott then people on the left are better off without him.
Whilst being accused of being an apologist for Labour, I have a very clear picture of what I believe in and what I choose to support. An independent who stands for one thing in the end stands for next to nothing. Wilkie is welcome to the cross benches. Pokie reform, after all, is one of the the more purile issues a government has to consider.
Tell that to the families in agony
I could not find purile anywhere on the web, but puerile turned up and I guess that's what you meant.
Puerile is variously given as juvenile, childish, silly, childishly silly and trivial, belonging to childhood, immature, exhibiting silliness, childishly foolish.
Tell that to the families in agony.
And apologise yet again for Labor (no u!). I'm still waiting for your list of its achievements.
How can anyone take you seriously?
Gillard chose the weakest of all options on the table: deferment
The Prime Minister has announced a back-down on poker machine reform. Even though enough politicians were prepared to support the Productivity Commission's recommendations to slow down machines to $1 maximum bets, the Prime Minister chose the weakest of all options on the table - deferring action to beyond the next election.
Today's announcement is a far cry from the meaningful reforms that were recommended by the independent Productivity Commission, based on 11 years of research and is an insult to the millions of Australian families who were counting on genuine reform. But it’s crucial that we don't lose heart.
We need to keep in mind why we’re fighting for reforms in the first place; for the people, not the politics. People like Clelia who lost her son in law to poker machine addiction and Ilona whose elderly mother lost her entire retirement savings to the pokies - despite her mother having dementia and poker machine operators doing nothing to help. We owe it to the families of those who've lost loved ones to the scourge of this industry not to lose hope because there are still reforms to be won and we must fight for them until we win.
We’ve already accomplished so much in a battle that has us pitted against the deep pockets of a poker machine industry that isn’t afraid to fight dirty and pervert the facts. We’ve built a powerful movement for poker machine reform, the likes of which Australia has never seen. We've helped set up a new coalition of organisations that serve and represent almost three million people and we've sparked thousands of conversations across the country which have catapulted poker machine reform on to the front pages. Together, through newspaper and TV ads, our direct mail campaign and a huge petition, we made sure politicians could not escape the stories of the impact that poker machine addiction has on Australian families.
And we've achieved real and measurable milestones. ATM daily withdrawal limits at poker machine venues will now be capped at $250 and all new machines will have to be mandatory pre-commitment compatible. Best of all, as one poker machine venue operator admitted on Sydney radio this week, the national conversation that has been sparked by those in support of reform has already led gamblers to turn away from dangerous, high loss machines.
Together we can harness our disappointment and use it to fuel our movement and make it stronger. The Stop the Loss coalition, of which GetUp is a founding member, launched yesterday and represents an unprecedented joining together of community, religious and consumer groups from around the country. The coalition is committed to continuing the fight for meaningful reform.
Thank you for your passion and commitment over the first stage of our campaign to win genuine poker machine reform. This next phase will require patience and heart but we're confident we will prevail - people powered movements always do. We'll keep in touch about the next steps and will update you on coalition efforts along the way.
Thanks for standing strong,
Erin, for the GetUp team
P.S. To take further action on this issue and join the Stop the Loss campaign, you can visit http://www.stoptheloss.org.au
Labor is not perfect but a damn big improvement on Howard years
Good grief, did I spell puerile wrong? Goodness me, I must be an uneducated lout then.
I have listed elsewhere Labour's achievements. I don't need to repeat that every time someone with a hate agenda calls on me to do so.
Labour is not perfect, but it is a damn big improvement on the Howard years, where the real value of pensions diminished by 20%. Howard introduced work choices. Howard took our boys to Iraq. Howard was responsible for Tampa and Children Overboard. Howard neglected climate change. Howard gave tax cuts to the rich every single year he was in office. Sorry, I'd have to go searching to remind myself of everything else that Howard did that was unconscionable. On all of these policies Labour had a clear and opposite policy. Labour is not perfect, but it is a damn sight better than the other mugs.
Disgusting, spineless puppets
You did not explain why you regard the pokie issue as juvenile, childish, silly, childishly silly and trivial, belonging to childhood, immature, exhibiting silliness, childishly foolish.
The list of Howard evils does not make Labor any better.
To me it's like choosing between being hanged or shot dead.
I don't hate Labor, I despise them. Hate would burn too much of my energy.
I'm wondering who on the Labor benches was bought, coerced, threatened, blackmailed by the pro-pokie lobby or bullied by the party leadership to back away from the deal with Wilkie.
Obviously, there weren't the Labor numbers to carry this.
The pro-family party, the party for the little people? Pah, disgusting, spineless puppets.
Pokies reform is a small matter in the greater scheme of things
By puerile I meant trivial. It is a small matter int he greater scheme of things. I again I say, if you make out Labour to be no different to Liberal then you are basically saying you would welcome Abbott into Government. If you can't see what a tragedy this would be for Australia then there is nothing further I have to say. Do the work of the Liberals for them. They will love you for it.
PS from the editor: Could you put headings on your stories yourself, please, to save us time? The "Subject:" reactangle is accessible to everyone posting.
Uncomfortable with a left movement that undermines Labor
A left movement that undermines Labour to the advantage of the Liberal Party is not a left movement I feel comfortable with.
Have you ever seen some one with withdrawal systems from pokies
I put three dollars in the one dollar machine every time I go to the Pub and that is not often I use all three dollars in one spin if I win I take the money and go now you are going to stop me because some people are stupid It is about time people become responsible for their actions instead of blaming the Government because they can't control themselves.What next I will only be able to buy one tattslotto ticket when a $20 million draw comes up or put one bet on the Melbourne cup?You can't get addicted to pokies it's a bad habbit and brainless people trying to win back their losses we all know that can't happen and so do they.Have you ever seen some one with withdrawal systems from pokies?neither have I.You can get addicted to Drugs Alcohol and cigarettes but pokies is all in their pea sized minds and now the rest of us are penalised because of DICKHEADS
It is a lack of self control not a addiction
Your right Carl you can't get addicted to pokies it is as silly as saying fat people are addicted to Food it is a lack of self control.Now we all going to pay the price, once again the minority we tell the majority what to do
Excess eating is an addiction
Nearly all fat people ARE addicted to food, it is the main cause of obesity.
It takes my breath away how the gambling bane on society is defended tooth and nail.
All the pretense to be a caring society, but no sympathy for the victims of this curse.
The hypocrisy of it: clubs making billions on the agony of wrecked families then doling out peanuts on 'community projects' like sports grounds.
We are a sick nation.