Poker machines are not required

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33407, 13 December 1973, Page 16

Poker machines are not required

The lure of poker machines —to those who play them and those who benefit from the revenue—is undeniable. For players the action is fast, the amount involved in any one transaction deceptively small, and the returns, sometimes, are spectacular. In New South Wales, where there are thousands of poker machines and hundreds of thousands of players, the returns in taxation and in profits to the clubs which install the machines are enormous. As a submission to the Royal Commission on Liquor in Auckland this week pointed out, clubs are able—thanks to the machines, to offer luxury facilities and entertainment at reasonable prices—and to provide $5O million in state taxes each year. But the financial attractions—and especially the lavish amenities they make possible for club members —tend to obscure the hard fact that the money must come from people’s pockets. Anyone who has spent time in a NSW. licensed club has seen the source —the grim row of poker-machine plavers each with a drink balanced in the container thoughtfully provided beside the machine, and each feeding in handfuls of coins. Five cents —or even 20 cents—for each pull of the handle sounds little enough- too manv patrons can, and do, spend a week’s wages in less than an evening. A dedicated nlaver can easily work two machines at once where the management has been kind enough to place them close together The attraction of the “ pokies is insidious: manv people find them as addictive as cigarettes or alcohol. Officials of sports clubs—such as Mr J R- Buckingham, president of the Auckland Leagues Club, who spoke persuasively in favour of poker machines at the Auckland sitting of the Commission this week-see the introduction of the machines as the solution of their clubs financial difficulties But the benefits conferred on members of sports clubs by the poker machines’ revenues would be far outweighed by the social consequences of this introduction. New Zealand is better off without them. —