This was recently published in the Australian Christian Magazine: www.australianchristian.org.au
People convert people. My head was pounding as I glanced across the row of seats at a 13 year old boy who had broken the law under the influence of drugs, sitting in court. He was a bright young kid attending a youth club I ran a few years ago. Now he was regularly “chroming” and that was fast extinguishing the spark from his eyes.
As the lawyer recounted his brief life history I wanted to shout, “How many times do I have to hear this same old story before something changes!”. The pounding grew into a headache and made me angry.
His story is as familiar as it is tragic: a family devastated by a parent addicted to pokie machines. In his case he had to wait outside venues with his brothers while their grocery money was devoured by a machine far hungrier than their empty bellies.
I have sat through many cases where I hear similar stories, all with a common denominator – pokie machines. My area, the Monash/Dandenong Region (Vic) lost the most to these machines last financial year in dollar terms. I wish the government could express that statistic in terms of suicides, broken families, homelessness and violence rather than just in dollar terms.
All who financially benefit from pokie machines in our area “trample on the heads of the poor” (Amos 2:7) – that’s experience speaking, not opinion. How can we respond as Christians?
Labelling any position on an issue as a “Christian response” is fraught with danger. If all churches were to unite and denounce gambling we would be roundly condemned as “wowsers” and “irrelevant relics from an archaic time”.
As a body of Christ we all hold an amazingly diverse set of opinions and values. Politically, Christians on the right would be as horrified as Christians on the left if we were all to be thrown in the same basket.
Yet we can respond. Australians love to gamble and who could begrudge them a wager? Here is our entry point: Pokies are NOT gambling. There is a pre-programmed pay out rate for machines which has nothing to do with chance. If you play you will lose – no ifs or buts. Conversely, for the operator there is guaranteed revenue. They do not wake up every morning wondering if they will make money, they know. How is this a game of chance?
There are creative ways to address issues that are both theologically sound and socially just.
BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS
The Hebrew people believed that the entire cosmos stood on two pillars: a pillar of justice and a pillar of righteousness, which was justice internalised (Matthew Fox).
“Justice and right are the pillars of your throne” (Psalm 89:14).
Injustice then becomes an issue of cosmic balance.
“All the foundations of the earth are shaken when the weak and orphaned are deprived of justice” (Psalm 82:3-5).
Hence, as followers of Christ we must always be seeking to address any system that exposes and exploits vulnerabilities in people, especially the poor, amongst whom Christ promises to reside (Matt 25:40). Indeed, we are charged with the responsibility of being an active part of supporting harmony and balance within the universe through responding to the needs of the poor and living lives of righteousness.
Martin Luther King Jr. lets us have it when he emphatically stated that “any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that can scar the soul is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried”. (Strive Towards Freedom, p.72).
Do I overstate? I hope not! Let’s get practical!
Applying these principles to the realm of pokie machines, let us take a look at points we can all agree on as a starting point for a consistent, authentic response:
* As a nation we comprise about 0.3% of the world population.
* Australia has about 20% of the world’s pokie machines.
* Victorians - for example - lost 2.47 billion on pokie machines last financial year.
As Christians I think we can all agree that efforts to reduce and eliminate pokie machines from our society are a reasonable response. How we do that is up for debate. Currently I support the efforts to not renew contracts with venues (which expire in 2012) and to seriously pare back the number of machines in the state.
I believe current measures such as smoking bans are marginal at best as they are neither structural nor practical. I regularly go into venues to have a look around and everyone is smoking everywhere in our region.
Reducing the number of machines from 28,000 machines is a great start.
I’d love for Australia to have a world parity of pokie machines, so that means we would have approximately 2850 machines nationwide. I’d like to see that.
1 response so far ↓
1 Brendan Ball // Oct 3, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Jim just emailed me a copy of an article you wrote in relation to pokies, which I thought was interesting. However, may I humbly encourage you to reconsider the phase “efforts to reduce and eliminate pokie machines from our society are a reasonable response”.
It is true that recent studies have suggested that some poker machines present a risk to consumer protection in that the majority of players lose control, including those whom do not suffer problematic behaviour, even momentarily during extended sessions of play (Dickerson, 2005), thus suggesting that these machines are inherently dangerous. However, if the long history of social issues such as gambling, alcohol and drugs, tobacco and others has taught us anything, it is that abstinence is an ineffective method of addressing underlying issues that drive demand for these substances (and machines), and will therefore fail to make a meaningful impact towards ameliorating the effect and incidence of problem gambling. In addition, any attempt that the Church makes toward abstinence will have to accept that it does have the ‘wowser and irrelevant’ label attached to it (as you mentioned), which further minimises any credibility Christians representing the movement bring to the issue.
Also, whilst Nick Xenophon’s (the South Australian Parliamentarian) electoral win clearly demonstrates that pokies are a hot political issue, an objective to eliminate them ignores the political reality in Victoria. Neither the Liberal of Labour party’s are serious reducing the number of poker machines in a meaningful way, because that is like asking to shoot the goose that lays the golden egg. Even the Liberal electoral promise to reduce the number of machines is not meaningful unless they target areas of socio-economic disadvantage. There is clearly a link between access to machines and problematic use, and not coincidently there is a far higher concentration of machines in disadvantaged communities where the returns are far greater. Therefore elimination would only make any difference in areas of high disadvantage, whilst lowering the risk of problematic playing by allowing them to be retained in lower risk areas (research shows that on average people travel 2.5klms to play pokies), thus taking a harm minimisation approach rather than abstinence.
The Martin Luther-King quote you cited is incredibly powerful, and it is in my humble opinion that it suggests the need for Christians to look beyond the face-value problem of too many pokies and player losses, and look to what causes these behaviours and the links to crime, family violence and family breakdown – something to which I am sure UNOH is dedicating their best efforts.
There are a raft of harm minimisation measures which may be introduced that could allow legitimate play, whilst at the same time effectively reducing the impact and incidence of problematic gambling, should the necessary political will be fostered.
If looking for a broad statement, I wonder if something like “efforts to reduce the impact and incidence of problem gambling, as well as removing pokie machines from at risk communities are a reasonable response”
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