8

Blow up the pokies

Tim Freedman, the lead singer of iconic Australian rock band The Whitlams, turns heads when he enters the Coopers Hotel in Newtown, inner Sydney. Wearing an open brown-leather jacket over a plain collared shirt, dress pants, and leather shoes, he looks more like a teacher than a rock star. He has thick eyebrows, short greying hair, wrinkles beneath his brown eyes, and a thin band of stubble from ear to ear. As he takes a seat across the table from me by the front window, the bartender nudges his colleague and points in our direction.

Back in the 1990s, before Freedman was a famous musician, pubs were where he spent most of his time and performed most of his music. ‘I essentially lived my life and conducted my career in pubs,’ he says. In Sydney’s inner west, he remembers there being live music in several venues every night of the week.

Freedman had never seen poker machines before they were allowed in New South Wales’ pubs in 1997. It did not take long before he ‘started raising my eyebrows at the amount people were putting into them in one afternoon’. The removal of stages, bars, and dining areas to make space for more poker machines — a far more lucrative revenue source — fuelled Freedman’s concern. ‘Publicans thought, Oh, this here’s the golden goose. Throw out the musicians, and fill the place with pokies. They thought all their Christmases had come at once. They really directed their businesses towards them for a few years.’ He remembers at one point there being only a handful of spaces in the inner west where local musicians could play. ‘And this is supposed to be the music centre of Sydney.’

But, Freedman says, after a while, publicans realised they had ‘initially overreacted and needed to make pokies and live music co-exist, so they put the pokies into a little room so we didn’t have to look at the addicts, because it’s not a particularly attractive spectator sport’. He says the pub we’re in provides a clear example of this. Gesturing to the door to the poker machine lounge beside the bar, he says, ‘They’ve done a good job here — you wouldn’t even know there’s machines back there. It’s an example of how sophisticated the publicans have got.’ He’s right — the only visual evidence that there are poker machines inside is the euphemistic sign hanging out the front: ‘VIP LOUNGE’.

It wasn’t until Freedman became exposed to the true human cost of poker machines that he became seriously worried. ‘When I saw poker machines affecting people’s ability to pay the rent,’ he says, ‘I could tell very quickly that they were quite a serious new development in the economic terrain.’

Freedman knew of two people in particular whose lives were unravelling because of poker machine gambling. They were two of his closest friends and fellow founding band members: Andy Lewis and Steven Plunder. ‘When I was calling the band up for a sound check, I’d have to get them off the pokies,’ Freedman recalls. ‘It was a new experience for me, because it used to be that I’d have to get them off the pool table.’

In 1996, Plunder passed away, and a year later Lewis left the band. But Freedman remained in contact with Lewis, whose gambling problems continued. ‘After Andy left the band in 1997, I knew that he was having trouble getting ahead financially because of the pokies,’ Freedman says. ‘It was aggravating me. So I wrote a song about it — a little story about sitting down the road and seeing my friend play the pokies where we used to play music.’

Freedman released ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ as a single in 1999. Set at the now-defunct Sandringham Hotel — a once iconic live-music venue in Newtown — the song tells the story of a failing father locked in a ‘secret battle’ with poker machines that were allowed in the first place so the government could say that ‘the trains run on time’.

With its catchy melody and hard-hitting lyrics, the song was the band’s first major hit. It peaked at number twenty-one on the charts, and propelled The Whitlams onto a national tour. Ironically, many of the packed-out halls they were booked to play were in large clubs housing hundreds of poker machines. ‘I felt like a Trojan horse,’ Freedman says. ‘We would always play that song, but I’d always respect the club and be subtle in my banter. Afterwards I would just say to the crowd, “Be careful on your way out. Don’t get stuck.”’ He remembers there being ‘pretty regular heartbreak and tears’ after the band performed the song.

But the band’s newfound commercial success was overshadowed by tragedy. A year after ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ was released, Freedman, while on tour in Canada, received news that Lewis had suicided. ‘He basically worked all week and put his whole pay cheque through the pokies on Friday afternoon,’ Freedman explains. ‘Then he went back to his workplace and hung himself.’

Hearing the backstory to the song immediately triggers memories of the horrid situations of the many gambling addicts I have met. They all know the same despair, helplessness, and self-loathing that drove Lewis to take his own life that fateful Friday. The tragic truth, however, is that, in a way, they’re the lucky ones; there are far too many others (the exact figure will never be known) who, like Lewis, simply cannot cope, who find living with an addiction to poker machines too unbearable to endure.

Freedman believes that ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ helped to bring the problem of gambling addiction — which at the time was still a relatively new and poorly understood phenomenon — ‘out of the shadows’. ‘Commercial radio around the country really pushed it,’ he says. ‘It was getting blared around building sites and workplaces and the western suburbs. So it was going right into the heartland. It struck a chord. I know after it was released it was the top-researched song on Triple M. Which could just be a case of the melody in the chorus, but I think it had as much to do with it being a poignant, succinct story which rang true for many people.’

Regional radio stations also regularly played the song. But, Freedman says, there were some unforeseen problems associated with this. ‘There was one big regional network who — because they broadcast in towns like Dubbo and Parkes, where the main business was the clubs — would say, “That was a song by The Whitlams called ‘I wish I’”. They didn’t even say its correct name, as they didn’t want to offend the clubs. They had to be very careful politically.’

In shining a light on gambling addiction and the problem of poker machines in Australia, Freedman also believes that ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ gave an important boost to the community gambling-reform movement that was developing at the time. As he says, ‘Every movement needs an anthem.’

Since ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ has been released, the community movement against poker machines has indeed become bigger and better organised. Reverend Tim Costello has been one of its figureheads from the very beginning.

Born and raised in Melbourne, he is a tall, balding man with a wide smile and a hearty laugh. Apart from his continuing gambling-reform advocacy, his distinguished career has included stints as mayor of St Kilda, CEO of World Vision Australia, and ambassador for the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation. Although he was voted as a national treasure in 1998, his opponents in the gambling industry and in politics see him very differently. As he tells me, he has, over the two decades he has spent advocating for gambling reform, been called a ‘wowser’, ‘Un-Australian’, ‘a troublesome priest’, and a ‘lover of the nanny state’. He laughs as he lists these insults before pointing out the double standards of those who hurl them. ‘As I often say to Liberals who love running the nanny-state line, “It was the Liberals under Henry Bolt who introduced the first mandatory seat belts anywhere in the world. And it was the Liberals under Jeff Kennett who introduced the first compulsory fences around backyard swimming pools. You’re very selective with how you use this nanny-state argument about not wanting to infringe on people’s liberty.”’

Costello was working as a solicitor in Victoria when the government announced in the early nineties that it was introducing poker machines into the state’s pubs and clubs. He was shocked by the news — ‘shocked at the ease with which a particular group could get its way in the political system without much resistance or public debate’.

Costello’s suspicion that allowing poker machines into Victoria would have major social ramifications was confirmed when a woman with a rap sheet as clean as a baby’s walked into his office needing legal representation. She had been charged with stealing $60,000 from her employer to feed her gambling addiction. Costello represented her in court, where she was sentenced to four years’ jail.

Later, Costello represented several other people in similar trouble. These experiences were what spurred him to raise his voice and campaign for poker machine reform. Each client would tell him a variation of the same story about losing all track of time, being in the zone, and not being able to stop gambling. ‘You meet enough people who have no criminal background, and now I’m representing them as a criminal lawyer, and eventually you think that something is seriously wrong.’

Around 2008, Costello enlisted the help of an old school friend, Neil Lawrence. Lawrence was an advertising guru and a masterful political communicator; he was the brains behind the hugely successful Kevin07 election campaign, which earned him the award of Australian Marketer of the Year. Unbeknown to Costello, he also shared a passion for tackling Australia’s gambling problem. ‘When I first rang Neil and asked, “Could you help with gambling and pokies?”, I was surprised to discover how much he hated them. He said, “Yeah — absolutely. Happy to help.”’

Costello and Lawrence worked together on a brief and ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 2012 aimed at countering the gambling industry’s marginal-seats offensive against the federal government’s mandatory pre-commitment scheme. But while the defeat of mandatory pre-commitment was disappointing, it did not dampen Costello and Lawrence’s commitment to the cause. In fact, Costello says, it put them on an important learning curve. ‘We knew we had to work smarter.’

The biggest problem Costello and Lawrence identified was a lack of public understanding about the design of poker machines; about exactly why they are so harmful and addictive. This lack of understanding, they realised, was what had enabled the industry to so successfully, for so many years, dominate the public debate about gambling addiction and reform.

Lawrence had a solution. Costello explains: ‘Neil said we must have a film that really explains the issue simply, that can be shown to communities and be broadcast on the ABC. He knew it would give us lift-off again after the defeat of the reforms.’

Co-produced by Lawrence, Ka-Ching: pokie nation premiered on the ABC in October 2015. It was a ground-breaking documentary, explaining for the first time the insidious design mantras behind poker machines, and the psychological and neurological effects of playing them, to the more than half-a-million Australians who tuned in for the premiere.

Almost immediately after the film aired, the industry went on the defensive. The GTA said it was ‘nonsensical to suggest that licensed poker machine suppliers seek to provide games for any other purpose other than entertainment’, and that the film presented ‘no credible evidence about Australian poker machines’.

But the industry’s response did not affect the shock felt by viewers. One reader of the Newcastle Herald wrote to the paper to say that the documentary ‘was incredibly interesting and revelatory, particularly the absolute physiological addiction, accompanying the psychological, that these machines are programmed to induce. To anyone who missed this insightful documentary, I recommend you view it. It certainly got me thinking.’ In the same paper, a former club manager wrote an opinion piece in which he said he ‘was heartened to see the documentary take viewers behind the reels and reveal some truths about the poker machine industry in Australia’, and advised readers that, ‘It’s time to speak up.’ In a letter to The Age, a reader wrote that Ka-Ching ‘revealed the worst as far as problem gamblers and their families are concerned. Nobody is a winner in this type of game.’

Ka-Ching went on to be longlisted for the Walkley Awards, and highly commended in the 2016 Australian Directors Guild Awards. Lawrence, however, would never see the success of his creation, nor the public stir it caused: tragically, three months prior to its broadcast, he died in a diving accident while on holiday in the Maldives.

For Costello, Ka-Ching marked a significant turning point for the reform movement. ‘It really was the big wind in the sail,’ he explains.

To continue the film’s message, as well as to unify the many disparate voices across the country advocating for gambling reform, Costello and Lawrence established the Alliance for Gambling Reform in February 2015. Officially launched in October to coincide with the release of Ka-Ching, it now consists of over forty member organisations, and is the peak body campaigning around Australia for the legislative reform of gambling and poker machines. Indeed, it is the largest, most coherent, and most organised gambling-reform group to ever have been established in Australia.

The alliance has campaigned aggressively since its launch to reframe perceptions of poker machines as a harmful, addictive product — not just ‘entertainment’, as the industry says — which, as it says, are ‘conning’ hard-working Australians. This reframing is best captured in its slogan: ‘The Pokies Play You’. To spread this idea and to educate more people about how poker machines are designed, it has arranged with community groups numerous screenings of Ka-Ching across Australia, in regional and metropolitan areas.

In September 2016, the alliance helped Andrew Wilkie, Nick Xenophon, and then-Greens senator Larissa Waters establish ‘PokieLeaks’. This continuing campaign calls on whistleblowers to share industry secrets with the guarantee of parliamentary privilege. ‘PokieLeaks will establish a valuable mechanism for industry insiders and members of the public to tell us what they know,’ Wilkie said at the campaign’s launch.

The alliance has also launched campaigns against organisations associated with poker machines in the hope they will break ranks which, in turn, will help build momentum for statutory reform. One of its most high-profile targets has been the AFL, whose heavy reliance on gambling revenue previously received little public attention. Nine Victorian clubs took almost $90 million from gamblers’ pockets between 2014–15 through the gambling venues they own. (The only Victorian club that currently does not own any poker machines is North Melbourne.) Throughout 2016, the alliance held numerous protests outside the gates of high-profile matches where volunteers distributed flyers and T-shirts emblazoned with anti-gambling messages, and gathered thousands of signatures for a petition telling the AFL to back laws for gambling reform.

But as well as attacking the industry directly, the alliance is also galvanising local councils into action in a bid to build more grassroots momentum for reform. As Costello explains: ‘We know we can’t win at state level — we’ve tried that for 15, 20 years. And we lost at federal level when the Wilkie–Gillard deal was crushed. So with the alliance we’ve decided to go back to community and councils. They get none of the money from pokies, but they pick up all the damage.’

One of the many local councils across Australia that have joined forces with the alliance is the City of Brimbank in Melbourne’s west. A highly disadvantaged municipality, many of its residents are under-skilled recent migrants, have limited English, and earn low incomes. But, as is the case in other areas of disadvantage, it has a disproportionate number of poker machines, and records some of the highest gambling losses in Victoria and in Australia.

The council offices are located in the suburb of Sunshine. Visible out of Mayor John Hedditch’s office window are the local markets and the many Vietnamese restaurants that line the main street several storeys below.

A long-term local and community advocate, Hedditch was elected mayor in 2016. He and his fellow councillors have made gambling reform, he explains, a ‘gold, gold priority, given the amount of harm that is being done in this community, with its status as the biggest losers in the state’. Echoing Costello, he says the local community in Brimbank is being left to mop up the mess — ‘the community, meaning the council, the police, and the service providers in the area.’ For this reason, the council did not hesitate to sign on as a leading member of the alliance.

The concentration of poker machines in disadvantaged areas such as Brimbank is ‘deliberate policy’, says Hedditch. ‘The government and operators know that this is where they’ll get their highest returns. You put them in the wealthier, more advantaged areas, and people don’t play them. There is a level of education and knowledge about your chances of success and the impacts they have that keeps people away from playing them.’ This type of policy, which he says prioritises profit over people, appals him. ‘The rationale behind any government policy that preys on the weakest and most vulnerable as a source of revenue has a real undercurrent to it of … I’m trying to think of a word. It will come eventually. But it’s not nice — whatever it is. It’s a very ordinary policy.’

‘The moral and ethical ground on which the operators and governments are standing is now shaking like jelly,’ Hedditch says. ‘They have no authority to continue with an industry like this. The only option is change.’

In a sign of how serious the council is about instigating change, it has released a formal gambling-reform policy document. ‘Local government plays an important role in minimising the harm associated with EGMs,’ the policy says.

There are a number of formal strategies being employed by the council to try to achieve its objective. One is advocating — on both a local and state political level — for the ‘systematic reform’ of gambling regulation in Victoria. As well as calling for the implementation of $1 maximum bets and mandatory pre-commitment, the council also wants a dramatic reduction in the number of poker machines in the local area, daily limits on cash withdrawals at venues, better enforcement of responsible gambling codes of conduct and strengthened inspection and auditing regimes of venues.

On top of advocacy, the council is doing whatever is possible within its powers under local government law to initiate tangible changes that will help reduce harm caused by poker machines and other forms of gambling. It has, for example, prohibited access to online gambling at all council-provided, -supported, or -sponsored internet access points; prohibited additional sporting clubs from operating poker machines on council-owned land; prevented sporting clubs from operating new poker machines on council-owned land under current agreements; and made submissions to government regulators to stop applications for new poker machines being allowed. It is also seeking to limit the hours of operation of poker machine venues through planning-permit conditions.

The council is also investing heavily in new community facilities so people have more places to socialise and entertain themselves in than just pubs or clubs that are dominated by poker machines. It has, for example, recently opened a 200-seat performing arts centre, and has developed an extensive activity program for the St Albans Leisure Centre. It is in the process of developing a masterplan for a large nature park.

According to Hedditch, providing more of these non-gambling-related community facilities is one of the best ways that local governments can help fix the problem with poker machines. ‘Elsewhere, in richer areas, there are other things for people to do,’ he says. ‘And that’s the difference. When you look at the stripe of disadvantage that goes through Brimbank, the opportunities in those places are limited. So the real question is: what else can we provide? There need to be other opportunities for people other than playing pokies.’

After speaking with Hedditch, I visit the nearby Kealba Hotel. The hotel is quiet, except for the poker machine lounge. It is more or less the same in design and layout as all the others I have visited across the country. Many of the people gambling are old, and many do not appear particularly well-off. There is one couple who exhibit all the visible signs of serious methamphetamine addiction: scabs, scratch marks, pock-marked cheeks, yellow teeth. Both are dressed in tracksuits, and play one machine together, quickly eating through $50. The man presses the button rapidly while the woman looks on, rocking back and forth on the chair and biting her nails with great intensity.

Nearby, 70-year-old Cathy bets 50 cents at a time on a Black Rhino poker machine. She has been at the pub since mid-morning; it’s now going on 1.00pm. She’s retired and has crutches at her side; just last week, she tells me, without stopping gambling, her back ‘went out of whack’.

Cathy — who is dressed in black tracksuit pants, a pink top, and sandals — comes here ‘at least’ once or twice a week. ‘It’s the only place I can really go to get out of the house,’ she says. For her, gambling isn’t about winning — it’s an ‘escape from the shit in my life’. On top of her recent injury, her long-term husband is dying from a severe illness, and her son suffers from severe diabetes.

But Cathy isn’t downcast — she has the battler spirit. As I’m about to leave, I say I hope things improve for her. ‘I’m no worse off than anyone else,’ she replies. ‘You’ve just got to live with the hand that’s dealt to you.’

Like Costello and Hedditch, 25-year-old Tom Lawrence is another person who refuses to accept that Australia has to live with the harmful hand it has been dealt when it comes to poker machines. He is Neil Lawrence’s son, and has recently dedicated himself to continuing the fight of his late father.

Lawrence, who has scruffy brown hair and a charming sense of self-deprecating humour, spent many hours working around poker machines while employed part-time as a bartender during university. He would also sometimes have a flutter on them. ‘I enjoyed playing them,’ he tells me. ‘I would even occasionally go off by myself and play if I was out with friends.’

In those days, Lawrence never questioned the presence of poker machines in pubs. While he felt they were isolating, he didn’t believe they were a serious problem. He had no information about them, nor did he ever see people who played them who looked like they were really struggling. ‘Then again, maybe they were but I didn’t see it.’ But Ka-Ching shattered Lawrence’s indifference. After watching it, he thought, Jesus Christ. This is so terrible. How are the pokies in nearly every pub and so unquestioned? He now passionately believes that poker machines ‘do the opposite of what pubs are for’ — that is, provide a space for live music, social cohesion, bonding — and have fuelled ‘cookie-cutter’ establishments that are essentially ‘a pokie room with a few beers on tap and maybe some shitty food’.

In October 2016, Lawrence and his sister, Anna, launched their ‘Proudly Pokies Free’ campaign at Oxford Art Factory, an icon of Sydney’s live-music scene. The launch attracted hundreds of supporters — a relief for Lawrence, who was worried there might be less than 50 — and included performances from Sydney-band The Preatures, as well as Tim Freedman, whose rendition of ‘Blow Up the Pokies’ turned into an all-out sing-a-long.

The campaign, which has gained the support of the City of Sydney, has a simple aim: to celebrate and promote those venues like the Petersham Bowling Club that do not operate poker machines. In the process, Lawrence wants to initiate not so much legislative change — ‘we’re not lawyers; we’re not qualified to do that’ — as behavioural and cultural change. He wants to encourage more people to start supporting poker machine-free venues, encourage more venues to start ditching their poker machines, and, ultimately, overturn the accepted myth that gambling and poker machines are a normal facet of Australian social life.

‘Celebrating pokie-free venues is an easy way to get people thinking about the issue,’ Lawrence explains. ‘And that’s a really good start. It’s not everything, but it’s necessary.’ It is also, he adds, a positive approach to tackling the problem, rather than engaging in a negative smear campaign. ‘If I started coming out and saying, “Boycott these venues that operate pokies!” then I’m only going to get the people that agree with me. I want the campaign to be for everyone.’

While the campaign is for everyone, it has a strong focus on young Australians. This is a practical choice, given the social space that Lawrence and his sister, Anna, inhabit. But it is a strategic choice, too. Lawrence explains: ‘After Dad passed away, I thought, given that I was working in venues, they would be a good place to tackle the pokies issue. I started thinking if we can just show young people what the pokies do and how they operate, then it’s a bit of a no-brainer to tap into that conscious consumerism, and use that as a strategy. The pokie culture has become so normalised, especially for people who have had pokies in their pubs ever since they walked into one when they were eighteen.’

Since the campaign was launched, Lawrence, Anna, and a large team of volunteers have been busy. Most of their work to date has been in Sydney and around New South Wales. They have arranged concerts, as well as screenings of Ka-Ching at poker-machine venues that have attracted large crowds, and have distributed campaign material and signage to poker machine-free venues to display. On top of this, they have also built an online map with all of the poker machine-free venues in Australia marked to make it easier for people support them.

A necessary first step for building this online map was ringing the thousands of pubs and clubs across the country to find out which ones did not have gambling facilities. Lawrence was surprised to discover just how many there were, and how supportive some venues were of the campaign. ‘I spoke to one guy in Ayre in Queensland. He said there are five pubs in Ayre, and all but two have pokies. He told me how much he hated seeing what they do to the community, and how happy he was to not have them.’

Lawrence was also shocked by some of the less-heartening comments he heard from other publicans. ‘The first thing we would say when we were calling venues was, “Do you have pokies?”’ Lawrence says. ‘One of the publicans said, “Yeah, mate. Lucky ones.” Another said, “Yeah — we’ve got 30. They haven’t paid out in a while. We’ll see you soon.” That was really bleak.’

Lawrence intends on taking the campaign national in coming years. He admits that its progress is likely to be slow, given that, for most publicans, financial considerations trump ethical ones. But he is as patient as he is confident that it will eventually succeed. ‘Once the campaign gets bigger, we can legitimately say that venues will have more traffic if they get rid of pokies,’ Lawrence says. ‘We’re not up to that yet, but I can see that will be the way it goes.’

Lawrence isn’t naïve about the difficulties venues that currently operate poker machines will likely face if they decide to ditch them. ‘Obviously there needs to be a transition period where they find alternative business models,’ he says. But the argument that pubs need poker machines to survive is, he says, ‘so weak’. ‘Why should those pubs exist for the sole reason of having a gambling den in the corner if they can’t survive on what a pub is meant to be — a place that is for food, drink, and chat?’

To validate his argument, Lawrence rattles off just a small selection of the many pubs in Sydney that are now poker machine-free. He also points to the one Australian jurisdiction where poker machines are banned in community venues. ‘Look at Western Australia. It has no pokies, and it still has pubs. Sure, we have the history of pokies here, and if you were to pull every one out tomorrow, it is going to be hard. But to just accept it because “that’s just the way it is” is incredibly lazy and irresponsible.’

Lawrence knows he doesn’t have ‘all the answers right now’. But he does know that ‘no one else in the world does what we do’. This makes him wonder: ‘Why should we just roll over and say, “That’s how it is — it’s just the Australian way.”?’

The gambling industry is certainly irritated by the growing community reform movement. An article in the December 2015 edition of ClubsNSW’s magazine, ClubLife, warned clubs of the ‘anti-gambling’ and ‘myopic’ lobby that is ‘once again claiming that poker machines are inherently evil — as if lights and sounds cause addiction rather than far more serious and complex causes within an individual’. It advised clubs to engage their local councils and all local MPs, and to ‘advocate not only for the good work that clubs do, but also for the benefits and successes of the world-class harm minimisation strategies that the NSW club industry has in place’.

Another article from the May 2016 edition accused Tim Costello of waging an ‘anti-club crusade’, saying that the alliance’s ‘main intent is to destroy the industry at all costs, not to help problem gamblers through sensible and proven harm-minimisation measures’. It also noted that ClubsNSW had contacted every mayor in New South Wales, encouraging them to ‘refuse to support the Alliance’s ideology-driven campaign’.

‘You can reinforce this message when engaging with your own local councillors, by highlighting the unique economic and social benefits you provide to your local community — benefits that would not exist without the safe, responsible gaming entertainment that our industry provides,’ the article concluded.

Yet another article appeared in the August 2016 edition, this one a feature specifically hitting back against a television advertisement run by the alliance for three weeks in May 2016, which alleged that poker machines were ‘rigged’ and ‘designed by addiction specialists’ to target the same part of the brain ‘that’s targeted by cocaine’. The article’s author was Professor Alex Blaszcynski from the University of Sydney.

In the article, Professor Blaszcynski rejects the advertisement’s claim that poker machines are designed by ‘addiction experts’, and says that the minority of gamblers suffering an addiction to the pokies ‘runs contrary to the claim “You don’t play the pokies; the pokies play you” — a catchy slogan but somewhat demeaning as it treats players as incapable of making their own choices and decisions.’ Blaszcynski also suggests that the best way to treat problem gambling is informing players of the nature of gambling and the risks associated with excessive gambling, instead of ‘making exaggerated and sensational claims under the guise of public health’.

Perhaps the industry’s irritation stems from a deeper worry about the recent momentum that the movement is gaining.

Several venues have recently made headlines for bucking the national trend and going pokie-free. In December 2015, the historic Old Bush Inn in Willunga, South Australia, announced it was ditching the pub’s ten poker machines and converting the gambling room into a new dining area. ‘We’ve witnessed a lot of people disconnected from others sitting alone in the pokies, it’s just plain sad,’ Christina Repetti, one of the pub’s new owners said. ‘It’s a great relief not to be contributing to or enabling that sort of social breakdown.’ Patrons reportedly broke out into applause when the machines were wheeled out.

The Tathra Hotel on the South Coast of New South Wales followed suit in June 2016. New owner Clif Wallis decided to sell off the licences for the hotel’s twelve poker machines. Having worked in the industry since he was 18, he realised that ‘some hotels have become primarily poker machine venues’ and that those running them are ‘forgetting about the traditional food and beverages they’re offering’. He said he wanted to transform the venue into a ‘place the community is proud of, and if they are proud of it, it will be successful’.

Then, in April 2017, it was announced that the once-iconic live-music Sydney pub The Landsdowne was reopening — without any poker machines. ‘We fucking hate them,’ new owner Jake Smyth, told the Sydney Morning Herald. Instead, the pub would focus on providing live music to Sydneysiders by establishing a new and improved performance space with a 200-person capacity.

Two days later, another iconic live-music Sydney pub, The Bald Faced Stag in Leichardt, announced that it, too, was jettisoning its poker machines — all 18 of them, which brought in over $10,000 a week — in order to make extra space for an expanded live music room, band lock-up, and merchandise store. Co-owner Kristy Clark told the Daily Telegraph that she wanted ‘to encourage emerging bands by giving them a place they can perform’.

Along with a growing trend of venues electing to go poker machine-free, there have been growing calls from segments of the media, as well as large companies with a stake in poker machines, for change. An August 2016 editorial in The Age argued that there was a ‘desperate need’ to address Australia’s gambling problem, which was having a ‘drastic impact on not just the punter, but also the wider community, in particular their families and friends’. It urged federal and Victorian governments to enact measures, such as $1 maximum bets, mandatory pre-commitment, and banning the practice of credit betting online, and claimed that critics were right to ‘argue governments have failed on gambling reform’.

In December 2016, Wesfarmers — the then-parent company of Coles — broke ranks with the industry and asked poker machine manufacturers to help implement a trial of $1 maximum bets on the 3,000-odd machines it owns. Most of these machines, which generate around $185 million in revenue, are located in Queensland where, in order to operate a liquor store — which is a minor yet important aspect of Coles’ business — a company must have a hotel licence. The reason the company needed the manufacturers’ help for the trial was that it is only manufacturers who are able to adjust the software on machines — a measure to stop unscrupulous operators tampering with machines.

The idea for the trial had been some time in the making — since 2010, in fact, when the Productivity Commission released its report into Australia’s gambling industry. Then, in mid 2014, ex-Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder met with Tim Costello and promised to implement a trial. ‘He said, “I will deal with this before I finish up at Wesfarmers. I give you my word,”’ Costello tells me. ‘He talked about the tricky issues of managing the matter, but he gave me his word. And he kept it.’

But managing the matter was far trickier than Goyder had expected. Upon receiving Coles’ request for help to implement a trial, every manufacturer refused, citing costs and administrative difficulties as their main reasons.

Industry critics, however, derided this stance, pointing to the fact that manufacturers had acted in the past in other jurisdictions to reduce the maximum bet on machines. For example, in 2009 the Victorian government introduced legislation lowering the maximum bet on poker machines to $5. ‘The game software required some alteration, and the cabinet artwork had to be reconfigured in some cases,’ Dr Charles Livingstone wrote in The Conversation. ‘It cost somewhere in the tens of millions, but there were no publicly aired complaints and it was implemented smoothly. For a business that makes around $2.6 billion a year, that was small change.’ Around the same time as Coles’ request, South Australian machines were also being reconfigured to have a maximum bet of $5. This attracted few public complaints from the industry.

Coles’ chief executive John Durkan told the Australian Financial Review that the manufacturers’ responses were a ‘smokescreen’, speculating that the real reason manufacturers refused was that, ‘us moving to [$1 limits] would have an impact on the rest of the industry’. Dr Livingstone agreed. ‘A successful trial of $1 bets could demonstrate that pokie harm could be reduced,’ he wrote. ‘If that occurred, the revenue model for NSW club businesses that rely heavily on pokie revenue would be rattled.’

Even though manufacturers have not budged from their initial resistance to the trial, Coles say they are prepared to exit the poker machine business entirely — the one requirement being that Queensland legislation be amended to allow them to operate liquor stores without having to own hotels.

There are also signs of change within the AFL following the alliance’s continuing protests. In August 2017, the league established the Project Fruit working party, which aims to reduce Victorian clubs’ reliance on poker machines. It will examine the clubs’ financial statements from poker machines venues, and consider alternative business strategies for venues to implement.

An editorial in The Age said the ‘AFL’s decision to investigate and then reduce clubs’ reliance on gambling should have been made before. But the organisation should be given the benefit of the doubt — and a chance to show, not merely assert, its bona fides.’ It added that other legal and lethal industries such as tobacco and alcohol have been rightly distanced from sport, and that ‘it would be similarly wise to minimise the role of gambling in something with so much influence, particularly on children. May the AFL’s project prove fruitful, rather than a charade.’

Regardless of whether the project does indeed turn out to be a charade, some individual AFL clubs are taking it upon themselves to overturn the status quo. The most notable example is Geelong. In March 2016, the club’s president, Colin Carter, said that the league has been ‘complicit’ in the harm caused by poker machines, and ‘slow to come to terms with the fact that we have got a big problem’. Carter conceded that an immediate exit from poker machines was not financially viable, but did say the club was wanting to be poker machine-free in the long term. In the meantime, Carter said the club wanted to run only ‘con-free’ machines, and was supportive of harm-minimisation reforms such as reduced maximum bets.

CEO Brian Cook echoed this in comments to the Geelong Advertiser, specifying exactly when the club planned to be poker machine-free. ‘Our plan is to increase our non-traditional revenue sources in order for us to consider whether we can get out of gaming by 2020,’ Cook said. ‘We can’t get out of gaming if we haven’t got replacement sources. In an ideal world, we’d like to run a football club without depending on gaming revenues.’

These were not empty words. In May 2017, the club unveiled its redeveloped home ground, Simonds Stadium. Gone was the gaming facility and its 100 poker machines that were previously located within the attached Club Cats. Half of the machines had been shifted to Geelong’s other gambling venue, located at Point Cook, but half had also been sold off. Speaking to The Age, Cook also said that the club was drawing up plans to sell the Point Cook gaming facility. To generate alternative revenue, the club launched a major fundraising campaign called ‘Our Ambition’, which raised over $16 million. ‘We started out hoping to raise $10 million,’ Cook said. ‘It’s astonishing that we got to $16.3 million. It has secured the club’s financial future for a generation. By the end of the season, we will be completely debt-free for the first time in 50 years.’

Even more recently — and more significantly — there has been change within major political parties, too.

In December 2017, the Tasmanian Labor opposition, led by its new leader, Rebecca White, announced its gambling policy for the state election due to be held the following year. The announcement followed the release in September of a parliamentary inquiry report about the future of the state’s gambling market. One of the inquiry’s main considerations was whether poker machines — all of which are owned by the Federal Group — should be removed from all of the island state’s pubs and clubs. Unable to reach a majority decision about this, it instead made the modest recommendation that poker machine numbers be reduced by significantly more than 150, as the Liberal government had recently promised.

The Tasmanian Greens and local gambling-reform groups had been exerting continuing pressure on Labor to take a strong stance against poker machines and gambling-related harm. Remarkably, given the support it had provided to the Federal Group for many decades previously, Labor did just that — going far beyond what even the parliamentary inquiry recommended. In a policy document entitled ‘It’s About the Health of Communities’, it said that, if elected, it would ‘take advantage of a once in a generation opportunity’ and remove poker machines from all of Tasmania’s pubs and clubs when the Federal Group’s monopoly licence expired in 2023. Under the policy, a $55 million package would be implemented to assist affected venues, especially smaller ones and those in regional areas.

‘We cannot, in good conscience, fail to act decisively when the evidence is in: poker machines cause more harm than good,’ the policy document read. ‘The only way to reduce the harm of poker machines is to take them off suburban streets and put them back in the casinos.’

This bold announcement, which was supported by the Greens and the Jacquie Lambie Network, but not by the federal Labor Party, made Tasmanian Labor the first major Australian political party to promise to remove poker machines from pubs and clubs. It also made poker machines a defining issue of the 2018 Tasmanian election.

The Liberal government attacked Labor for its hardline stance, with Premier Will Hodgman saying that removing poker machines from community venues would be ‘hurtful’ to Tasmanians, and that, ‘unlike Labor, we believe that Tasmanians should be able to choose how to spend their money, not be dictated to by the government’.

Unsurprisingly, the Liberals were joined by the gambling industry, with both the Tasmanian Hospitality Association and the Federal Group launching huge, aggressive anti-Labor campaigns across the state in the lead-up to the March 2018 election at an estimated cost of $5 million. Newspapers were saturated with single-page and double-spread anti-Labor advertisements; clubs and pubs were covered in posters and billboards containing messages such as, Labor and The Greens think you’re stupid. What’s next? Don’t let them tell you what to do; and industry representatives and government ministers repeatedly claimed in media interviews that Labor’s policy risked over 5,000 jobs, despite a 2017 report commissioned by the Tasmanian Department of Treasury and Finance finding that only 400 jobs would be put at risk if poker machines were removed from community venues.

In one infamous television advertisement aired during the election campaign, the Tasmanian Hospitality Association also claimed that Labor’s policy would force the cancellation of ANZAC Day celebrations in the state’s RSL clubs. The state RSL president, Terry Roe, quickly refuted the claim and condemned the politicisation of the memorial day.

But while it was full of misinformation, the industry’s campaign paid off: the Tasmanian Liberals were re-elected for a second term with a clear majority. In his victory speech, Premier Hodgman was self-congratulatory. ‘Four years ago, [Tasmanians] voted for change,’ he said. ‘Tonight they have voted for no change, to stick in the direction the state is heading and to taking it to the next level.’ In her concession speech, White was defiant. She said that Labor had lost to the ‘most well-resourced campaign in Tasmania’s election history’ and that, ‘It shouldn’t be the case that you can buy a seat in the Tasmanian parliament. That is a shame. The Tasmanian people should be represented by the best representatives, not the richest.’

Despite the defeat, Tasmanian Labor is committed to removing poker machines from the state’s pubs and clubs. ‘I know, and the Labor Party knows, that our decision to take this issue to this election was the right thing to do for the health of our communities and for the economy of Tasmania,’ White said the day after the election. ‘I know that the Labor Party’s position is not going to change on this. We remain firm on our view that poker machines should be restricted to casinos.’

While the 2018 Tasmanian election was one of the most significant battles in recent times in the larger war being waged against poker machines across Australia — and proof that even major political parties are beginning to turn against the industry — it was preceded by an even more significant battle. This one was fought not at the ballot boxes, but in a court of law.