The contradiction of poker machines and the comfort of our clubs

Poker machines and contradictions appear to be comfortable bedfellows.
Up front, the once known “one-arm bandits”, but which are now more amiably known as “gaming machines”  with only buttons, have the potential to decimate lives.
Considered in isolation, the addiction some have to the machines or at least the idea of winning they inculcate and the subsequent devastation brought on by the inevitable mounting losses, we should unquestionably disable them forthwith.
Tasmanian MP, Andrew Wilke, who has pledged his support for the Labor Gillard Government and has witnessed the personal wreckage that emanates from poker machine addiction, wants the government to introduce, nation-wide, pre-commitment technology for all gaming machines.
Players would need to indicate how much they were prepared to gamble each day and so they would then be issued with a card on which the limit was inscribed and once they had reached it they could not access another gaming machine, anywhere in Australia.

Moama RSL CEO,
 Mr Ashley Menzies.

Although gaming clubs have not yet had the intimate workings of the card-based control explained, they do know they would shoulder the costs of updating all their machines.
Just recently, at the annual general meeting of the Moama RSL Club, the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ashley Menzies, warned members that Mr Wilke’s proposal, should it become law, could bring the club to its knees.
He predicted that Mr Wilke’s pre-commitment proposal would reduce the club’s income by nearly half to seriously erode its employment abilities (it presently employs about 100 people), end the broad support it provides to local community groups and, naturally, scale back the extent of and comfort provided to its hundreds of members, many of whom come from throughout Victoria and distant parts of Australia.
Mr Ashley said his club has only one user of the gaming machines who has personally acknowledged their problem and subsequently had themselves banned from the premises.
That contrasts markedly with some of the big metropolitan clubs that can have as many as 150 people voluntarily excluded from their premises and so have a full-time person administering that aspect of the club’s business.

Mr Ashley says it appears unfair and unreasonable to target poker machines when so many other avenues to gambling exist, among them all sports, and all of which can easily be accessed in the online world.
Multi-million dollar clubs such as Mr Ashley’s unquestionably profit from poker machines, but they also have an incalculable social value, particularly in country communities, that seems to have escaped Mr Wilke’s notice.
Many people, old and young, use the likes of the Moama club as a meeting place, a place where they can engage in various social activities and, importantly, enjoy excellent food in comfortable surrounds at particularly low cost, courtesy of poker machine profits