When a person enters a club and has plenty of cash with them or accesses ATMs or eftpos facilities, a gambling venue wants nothing more than to keep them going on the poker machines until their pockets and bank accounts are empty.
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Gambling executives know that the odds are in their favour and, given enough time, they are sure to come out ahead.
They will stand up and say that is a lie and that they don't want to see people be harmed by gambling.
But there is simply no evidence to the contrary, when the ACT has had, alongside NSW, the most harmful poker machines in Australia.
They have had decades to implement harm minimisation measures to ensure consumer safety and not only have they never sought to do this, they have actively opposed suggested reforms at every step.
It is clear that Canberra's gambling industry must be rubbing their hands with glee over the desire of Marisa Paterson, a Labor MLA, to defer real action to reduce gambling harm in the ACT.
20 years for change is too long
Last week in a bizarre inquiry in the Legislative Assembly, Dr Paterson tried to tear down the government's researched approach to tackling gambling harm holistically and championed her plan to reduce the number of Canberra's poker machines to zero.
This naiveté was astonishing and highlighted that her expertise in the area of gambling has been conducted in a research lab and not in the real-world gambling landscape of clubland.
The first catch of this idea is it would be over the next two decades. So the high level of gambling harm in the territory would continue until then.
The second catch is that it would be at the expense of a central monitoring system, the only mechanism needed, in which to ensure that people don't venue hop to avoid reaching limits of gambling losses.
Dr Paterson believes a cashless system each individual venue could administer would provide enough support to tick the harm minimisation box, and ignored the advice from every expert that followed Gaming Minister Shane Rattenbury, who insisted that the only effective way to ensure meaningful harm reduction in the ACT would be through a CMS that would facilitate easy application of measures such as empowered self-exclusion from use of poker machines, pre-commitments, and loss limits.
The third catch is that her plan would need to be supported by the next five territory governments. This assumption seems fanciful considering both parties have strong ties with the gambling industry in Canberra and it is unlikely that this approach would be supported by other MLAs, not to mention the strength of a cashed-up gambling lobby, able to spend millions in influencing decision-makers.
As background, the government is already slowly reducing the number of poker machines. So far, Canberran's losses have continued to escalate because the intensity - the capacity to extract revenue from users - is increasing over time and there are so many venues in the ACT that accessing them is easy. Many suburbs having multiple venues in a very small radius.
Holistic approach needed
At this point, chipping away at reducing the number of machines per venue is having little or no effect on reducing gambling harms. Therefore a more holistic approach is required.
Logically, reducing the number of poker machines will start reducing gambling harm at some point.
However, any reductions in gambling harm from a plan that takes 20 years could well be over a decade away.
With early adulthood a risky time for people to experience gambling harm, relying on a plan that takes two decades would endanger another generation of young Canberrans before any substantial harm reduction occurred.
Dr Paterson argued that the cost of a central monitoring system would somehow permanently lock in high numbers of poker machines, using the logic that once money was invested to install a central monitoring system, it would be difficult to eradicate them from the ACT.
This is a false assumption.
There is nothing inherently inconsistent between a central monitoring system and a phase out of poker machines.
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If the gambling industry wants to be permitted to use these dangerous machines, it is entirely reasonable that they be required to install a central monitoring system at their own expense.
It is the cost of doing business. If some clubs cannot afford this system, they need to rethink their business model of relying on revenue that harms their members.
The clubs are also free to sell their poker machine licenses to the ACT government under the generous terms already offered currently in the buy back scheme.
We would welcome a private member's bill from Dr Paterson that would see annual reductions on the number of poker machine licenses until Canberra is free of them.
Our first caveat is that it could not preclude a central monitoring system and other concrete harm prevention steps now.
- Kate Seselja is a national advocate for gambling reform with lived experience of gambling harm and is the founder of The Hope Project.
