11

Easy to get behind, but very hard to catch up

‘Slowly but surely,’ Doug says, ‘I’m moving forward.’ On my recommendation, we’re meeting at The Henson, a pub in the quiet backstreets of Sydney’s inner west. It used to have poker machines, but ditched them several years ago in an effort to become more family-friendly, food-focused, and community-orientated. In their place, a secondary dining room and deli and small grocery store have been installed.

Five months have passed since Doug tearfully confessed in the neglected back garden of his home that he had slipped back into his old ways and started gambling regularly again. There’s a spark in his eyes and vigour in his voice, as if a shroud of gloom has lifted. His sense of humour, seemingly dead before, has also come back to life. When I suggested we meet at The Henson, telling him it had no poker machines, he said jokingly, ‘That’s a shame. I guess we better go somewhere else.’

Seeing this improvement in Doug’s demeanour, it’s unsurprising to hear he hasn’t been gambling in recent months. He still has urges, but his resilience is stronger, making him better able to manage and resist them. There have been, he admits, a ‘handful of relapses’, but says they are becoming ‘more and more spaced out, and less intense’. His savings are growing steadily, and, in a sign of his progress, his counselling sessions at St Vincents have been reduced to a monthly basis. He says he is confident he will soon be able to cease counselling completely.

It’s Doug’s first time visiting The Henson. Unaware there were any pubs left in Sydney that did not offer gambling facilities, he is impressed. ‘There should be more pubs like this. There are plenty of people here, and there are kids playing. It’s like a pub from yesteryear. You might not remember pubs without pokies. I certainly do. I can only hope that this is the way they become in the future.’ The absence of temptation is a huge relief. ‘When you’re in a pokie pub eating or drinking, you’re always thinking, Don’t gamble! Don’t gamble! Obviously, only gambling addicts are like that. But here I don’t need to worry.’

Even though Doug’s mental health has recovered significantly since his mental breakdown, he is still on medical leave from the army. Attempts to return to full-time service have been unsuccessful, as have his requests to transfer to a different base where he would be away from the superior who harassed him. To busy himself instead of idling away the days at home, he has continued truck driving and been doing odd carpentry jobs. He says he still wants to continue serving — he did, after all, give up his own, very prosperous business to pursue a career in the defence force.

Despite the setbacks, a recent psychiatric report has imbued Doug with renewed hope for his chances of eventually succeeding in his quest to return to the army. While it notes that he has a continuing vulnerability to relapse of symptoms of depression and gambling disorder, it says he is ‘above average intelligence’ and recommends he not be medically discharged, but granted the opportunity of a gradual return to the army in a different setting.

This report is a great relief for Doug. ‘It really gives me some reassurance that I’m not crazy or stupid,’ he says.

As well as not gambling, another momentous development in Doug’s life has contributed to his improved wellbeing: Jane, his girlfriend, is pregnant with their first child. He smiles as he tells me this, a smile that brings with it tears of joy. ‘I’m so happy about it. It’s changed my life. It’s been on the cards for a while. We agreed, okay, we’re going to start trying. And, sure enough, it was a success.’

Doug’s excitement about becoming a father, however, is flecked with nervousness — nervousness about the responsibility and inevitable stress involved. He knows his resilience will be seriously tested, and he worries about how — if — he will cope and about the possibility of relapsing.

As I walk home later, so too do I.

In 1984, George Orwell writes that for many citizens of Oceania, the lottery was:

their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons.

I wonder whether, if Orwell were alive today and wrote a modern version of his classic novel, he would have substituted the lottery with poker machines. They are likewise for many people in Australia a ‘folly’, an ‘anodyne’, and an ‘intellectual stimulant’; the biggest jackpots are a major attraction, yet have such slim odds attached to them that they may well as be ‘imaginary’; and the constant delivery of small wins feed gamblers’ hopes and keeps them coming back for more and more. Gambling lounges inside pubs, clubs, and casinos around Australia also certainly have a slightly dystopian feel to them, and no doubt the double-speak of the industry would have piqued Orwell’s interest.

Doug has a different analogy for poker machines. For him, they are like ‘drugs by stealth’ that trick players into thinking they are harmless fun. For him, this makes them far worse than addictive drugs. ‘At least with meth or coke there’s a physical process that you can see happening,’ he says. ‘You can’t see this shit, which is why it’s so unfair.’

Despite how entrenched the political impasse is currently when it comes to gambling reform, it isn’t wishful thinking to believe there will be a time when genuine change does come. As the downfall of Big Tobacco proves, no industry — no matter how almighty — is immortal.

Cast your mind back to half a century ago. Cigarettes were cheap, widely advertised, sold in classy, colourful packaging, and smoked anywhere a person wished — outdoors or indoors. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, a trove of scientific evidence about the addictiveness and health effects of tobacco began to be amassed, and triggered calls by public-health experts for stricter tobacco controls. Big Tobacco fought tooth and nail to protect their profits, which were inevitably threatened by the controls being called for. Similar to the gambling industry today, the tobacco industry lobbied politicians, donated extensively, ran large-scale advertising campaigns, and supported academics whose research cast doubt on the health effects and addictiveness of smoking. For a long time, these strategies were successful. Even knowing that the industry lied about having knowledge of the harms associated with smoking, and that it deliberately tweaked cigarettes with chemicals to make them more addictive wasn’t enough for many politicians to take action.

Gradually, however, the industry did lose its influence. Nowadays, Australia has some of the strictest tobacco-control measures in the world. Cigarettes are taxed so heavily that they are the second-most expensive globally behind Norway; legislation has outlawed smoking inside all public spaces such as cafés, bars, pubs, offices, and cinemas, as well as in many outdoor public spaces, including outdoor dining areas, children’s playgrounds, and public-transport stops; tobacco advertising and sponsorship is banned; and cigarettes are now required to be sold in dull, grey packaging with graphic health warnings — a measure that, at the time of its introduction, had not been tested anywhere else in the world.

It’s worth briefly pondering how all this has happened. As Simon Chapman, emeritus professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, and a leading figure in the anti-tobacco movement, says, it certainly hasn’t happened by accident. Rather, ‘it has happened by skilful advocacy, positioning the issue of smoking as something the state needs to act on,’ he tells me. ‘We made it impossible for any politician with any intelligence or sophistication to stick up for the tobacco industry — we completely trashed the brand.’

An understanding of the inner workings of the media, imbuing the issue of smoking with a compelling subtext, and developing a large and indisputable evidence base were crucial to the ‘skilful advocacy’ that Chapman speaks of. But so, too, was a recognition of one of the unfortunate realities of politics: that real, meaningful change is almost always slow and incremental. Recognising this taught tobacco-reform advocates like Chapman the need for both patience and continuous effort. ‘Doing this sort of stuff is full-time work,’ Chapman says.

Chapman’s sense is that there are still many years before Big Gambling goes the same way as Big Tobacco and becomes a social pariah, to the point where there is bipartisan support for gambling-reform measures that are as strict as plain packaging. He’s probably right. But the recent successes of the gambling-reform movement indicate that its wheels are well and truly in motion. The key will be finding ways to ensure that they continue to spin, no matter how many spikes the industry lays down on the road to halt forward momentum.

Ironically, some of the people who will be most pleased when meaningful gambling reforms are finally implemented are some of those politicians who were responsible for setting up the industry in the first place. Many, like Frankenstein, resent the creature they set free, and, having observed the immense social harm associated with poker machine gambling, have done that all-too-rare thing in politics: admit they made a mistake.

In 2008, the late Wayne Goss, who was premier of Queensland from December 1989 until February 1996, confessed that he wished he had never brought in poker machines. ‘I think they’re a scourge,’ he said, adding that the problem with them is that those ‘who mainly play them are the people who can least afford to do so’. Michael Atkinson, a Labor MP in South Australia first elected in 1989 and now the speaker of the parliament, told InDaily newspaper in 2014 that introducing poker machines ‘was one of the worst things a Labor government did’. Employing the same language as Goss, he said they were ‘a scourge for poor and vulnerable people’. Former Victorian government minister Ian Baker told the Herald Sun in 2006 that introducing poker machines into pubs and clubs ‘was a mistake’, and that it was ‘really distressing’ to see the social harm they have caused. Even former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett — who, as premier, enthusiastically pronounced a ‘gambling-led recovery’ of Victoria and oversaw a dramatic rise in the number of poker machines — told The Age in 2004 that, with the benefit of hindsight, he would consider limiting poker machines to the state’s one-and-only casino. His predecessor, the late Joan Kirner, who introduced poker machines into Victoria, agreed, saying casino-only restriction would be a ‘really good idea’.

Politicians from Western Australia — the one state where poker machines are restricted to the casino — are not troubled in the same way. In fact, the feeling among many of them about holding firm against the march of poker machines in the 1990s, and continuing to oppose their introduction into clubs and pubs to the present day, is the opposite of regret. As Geoff Gallop, the premier of Western Australia from 2001 to 2006, tells me, ‘There’s a sense of pride that WA is different from other states.’

Gallop explains that, as in other states, there was serious budgetary pressure in Western Australia in the 1990s to legalise poker machines in community venues. He remembers receiving Treasury reports while in opposition, advising to go down that path. His predecessor in government, Liberal premier Richard Court, rejected this advice, as did Gallop when he took the reins of government, electing instead to lift taxes elsewhere to raise revenue. ‘My judgement call was always, “Why increase the amount of suffering in the community when you can avoid it?” You might do it because you want the revenue, but as a politician I think it’s important that you stand firm on matters of public interest. I just take a cost-benefit attitude towards public policy, and if the costs are outweighing the benefits, why would you want to go there? And we weren’t saying poker machines should be totally banned, but that if there is gambling of that type to be done, then people have to go to the casino to do it.’

According to the Productivity Commission, the rate of problem gambling in Western Australia, is one-third of what it is in other Australian states. In 2015–16, the state’s Lottery Commission, using money derived from lottery sales, granted over $118 million to not-for-profit community groups. This was significantly more than New South Wales’ clubs gave to community groups in the same period — $20 million more, in fact. The WA Lottery Commission gave a further $162.6 million to hospitals, arts, and sports groups through statutory allocations.

All of this makes Gallop wonder: ‘How are the people of WA really losing out by not having pokies?’

In early 2017, Doug and Jane became the parents of a baby girl. The day after the birth, Doug texted to say they were ‘overwhelmed with love and joy’ for their newborn.

Two months later, I meet with Doug at The Henson again. He isn’t doing well. Raising a newborn, he tells me, is more of a challenge than he ever expected or prepared for. Utterly exhausted from lack of sleep and the extra hours of work he has been doing to support the family, his resilience is failing. The urges to gamble, to get the rush of a big win, have resurfaced stronger than ever. He has struggled to resist them, relapsing on several occasions since the birth. One of the worst relapses he tells me about occurred at a pub nearby his home after work, two evenings earlier. He lost over $500 in the span of two hours.

Doug’s financial situation is ‘perilous’. He currently owes four weeks’ back rent, his phone and utility bills are overdue, and, after a few of the relapses, has been forced to use what is in the coin jar at home just to pay for fuel and food for the family. His relationship with Jane is equally perilous. She is as tired and exhausted as Doug from caring for their new child, and has threatened to leave on multiple occasions after learning of his relapses. Doug knows as well as anybody that she would be warranted in doing so. ‘I feel so guilty. I feel like I’m being such a shit dad,’ he says, holding back tears. To try and halt the slide backwards, he has recommenced weekly counselling.

Six weeks pass before I speak with Doug again. I’ve been worrying about him, Jane, and their baby daughter. Doug is too busy with work and fatherhood to meet in person, so we arrange to speak on the phone. As I wait for him to answer, I expect the worst.

I’m relieved, however, when he tells me in a calm, quiet voice that ‘things are looking much better now’. He is gradually adjusting to life as a father, and is getting more sleep and is less exhausted. Reducing his stress further is the fact that, since we last spoke, he has finally had closure with the army. Despite the recommendation of the psychiatric report he received several months ago, he will be medically discharged in the next few weeks. Although not his preferred outcome, Doug is willing to accept it. He is eager to move on with his life, and, having recently learnt of other servicemen and servicewomen who endured similar harassment at the hands of colleagues, has had serious doubts about remaining in the defence force. ‘Obviously, what happened to me was very bad, but there are people who have had much worse situations. That’s helped me to put things in perspective.’

All of this, combined with his return to more regular counselling, has helped Doug rein in his gambling before it has run too wild and become ruinous. He has not relapsed since a few days after we last met at The Henson, and says the urges have waned to the point of being almost non-existent. ‘The last couple of weeks, I haven’t had a desire to play. I know it’s only been a short time, but that’s a significant mindset change.’ He can’t yet be sure that this is a permanent change, and is being hyper-vigilant for warning signs. But he is optimistic — more optimistic, he says, than he is worried.

A dream from a few days before we speak has heightened his optimism. It was about poker machines, and while it wasn’t the first time they had appeared in his sleeping consciousness, this dream was very different from other ones. In it, he recalls, he was at a new venue, accompanied by a stranger, and was playing a machine he had never seen before. ‘And, within a few minutes, I won the feature. I had all these free spins, and ended up winning $3,500. And everyone in the place was so happy, so excited, for me. But I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t really feeling it. I thought, Cool. $3,500. Whatever. Then I woke up, and I just felt depressed.’ Other times when he has woken from a dream about poker machines, his heart has been beating out of his chest. ‘I think the bubble burst.’

But even though the future looks promising, the pain of the past lingers. Or, in Doug’s own words, ‘Although the bleeding has stopped, the wound is still healing.’ He knows it will be some time before he has regained Jane’s trust and confidence in him as a reliable partner and, now, father. That she didn’t leave long ago and has continued to support him in such turbulent times is something he will be forever grateful for. ‘It’s amazing we have survived.’ He is also still recovering financially from the last few relapses. His weekends are still largely spent working, and only last week was he able to pay the back rent he owed. He is yet to clear his other debts. ‘It’s easy to get behind, but it’s very hard to catch up,’ he says.

It’s easy to get behind, but it’s very hard to catch up. This poignant truth echoes in my head after Doug and I stop talking on the phone. I think of how long it will take him to finally catch up, how long it will take for the lingering pain of the past to disappear completely.

I also think of Andrew, the man I met at The Star casino in Sydney who lost $1,700 in one afternoon, and whose story was the seed from which this book grew. I wonder how he is. I wonder if he still falling behind, or whether he is now also trying to catch up. I wonder if he is still with his wife. I wonder if he is still alive.

Later, I think back to the very first time I met Doug in the waiting room of St Vincent’s. I think about him sitting with his eyes glued to the ground, so nervous he could barely speak. And I think of how others would do well to heed the message of what he said when I let him know it was fine if he no longer wanted to participate in the book. It’s fine. You know it’s this taboo topic, poker machines, and there are a lot of people who are addicted to them. I hope I can help them by talking to you.