Tom Cummings

As New South Wales joins Queensland on the “red tape reduction” bandwagon, it’s gamblers who will foot the bill.

The TAB reckons gambling for men is just like shopping for women. Yep, you read that right.

For decades now, Australia’s poker machine industry has hammered home a number of self-serving points. Don’t blame us, they say. We’re simply providing a legal form of entertainment that most people enjoy without harm. It’s the few who can’t control themselves who ruin it for everyone else. And hardly anyone who plays the pokies really has a gambling problem anyway. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that it’s all a lie. All of it. Everyone who regularly plays a poker machine suffers as a consequence… every single person.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver made a bit of a splash in New Zealand a few days ago, when it was announced that his proposed restaurant in Auckland would NOT be in SkyCity Casino’s dining precinct because he didn’t want to be associated with gambling.

A few weeks ago, when it was revealed that a tent company had paid for Coalition immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison’s trip to Nauru, I joked that the Coalition would probably end up outsourcing their gambling policy to Clubs Australia. It was a throwaway line that got a few laughs.

I’m not laughing any longer… because that’s exactly what has happened.

Picture this.

The government, belatedly realising that the poker machine industry has gone too far in its quest to maximise profits, decides to act. They announce that as a measure to combat problem gambling, the maximum bet on poker machines will be slashed. An aggressive timeframe is put in place; industry has two months to ensure all new machines comply, and within two years all poker machines, new and old, must meet the new standard.

Are you sick of sports betting ads? Hate the sight of Tom Waterhouse’s grinning face? Find it impossible to hear “Those Magic Moments” without thinking of those suckers at the TAB?
Well, get used to it. If the attitudes of our politicians are any indication, things won’t be changing for a long, long time… if at all.

Sports betting ads are the cane toads of Australia’s broadcast media. Unwanted, unloved, they are multiplying at a rate of knots and marching across the landscape, devouring everything in their path and resisting all attempts to beat them into submission.

Much has been made lately about banning the promotion of live odds for sports betting. It’s a topic that has simmered along for quite some time, but has recently gained momentum since everywhere-man Tom Waterhouse bullocked his way into practically every corner of the media. His grinning face has proven to the catalyst for an unprecedented reaction from the viewing public, and it seems that reaction has not gone unnoticed.

Good old Gai Waterhouse. You’ve got to hand it to her; she’s had enough of all these nasty politicians and Twitterati slagging of her boy Tom for no good reason, and she’s not going to take it anymore.

Gambling and sport. It’s the hot topic of the moment, even hotter in many ways than poker machines were last year… and it’s not hard to see why.

Wednesday 6th March, 2013. It started out like any other day, but by nightfall Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu had quit the state’s top job and all anyone could talk about was where the Victorian Liberals were going to go from here.

The Victorian Government has been making something of a big deal about the latest poker machine spending figures, and it’s not hard to see...

I’m not a fan of the current generation of betting agencies, not by a long shot. The pervasive advertising, the convoluted terms & conditions, the overwhelming encouragement to bet by whatever means, whenever and wherever possible… really, there’s not much to like.

Tomorrow is Melbourne Cup day. The day of the “race that stops a nation”. The day every man, woman and their dog has a...