This weekend’s conference is a critical moment for New South Wales Labor. It’s a chance for elected officials and members to finally choose to act on the scourge of poker machine harm.
And we must.
For too long, NSW politics has treated the pokies as a problem that everyone acknowledges but nobody is prepared to solve.
For too long, our parliamentarians have looked the other way while the suffering caused by gaming machines has been allowed to fester and spread.
For too long, the private interests of the poker machine lobby have trumped the public interest of preventing addiction and harm.
But at this conference, for our party, this is a crisis that can no longer ignored.
In part, that’s because the problem is getting worse. The scale of losses and harm have grown truly obscene. The facts are worth recording because they are so stark.
The almost 90,000 poker machines in NSW communities represents the largest number per capita of any jurisdiction on Earth.
State-wide loses reached $9.3bn last year and are on track to break the $10bn ceiling this year.
The vast majority of people in our state who seek assistance for gambling addiction report that it’s the pokies that have trapped them. Worse still, the losses and the harm are highly concentrated in working-class communities and among low-income families. Places where every dollar counts.
Put simply, the people who suffer most from poker machine losses are overwhelmingly the people Labor was created to represent.
For example, in the Fairfield and Canterbury-Bankstown municipalities, losses for each community will soon top $1bn annually.
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There is another reason that action on poker machine harm cannot be put off any longer.
The people of NSW have had a gutful of politicians failing to act. The problem is so prevalent that millions of citizens know the sad story of a loved one who has been brought down by the pokies.
From every corner of our state and all sections of society, people are speaking out to say that this obscenity cannot be swept under the rug any longer.
Churches, unions, councils and charities are part of a growing chorus calling for change.
Just as importantly, we all know what has prevented governments from acting before now – the extraordinary political power of the poker machine lobby.
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For decades these lobbyists have perfected the politics of intimidation.
Every time reform is proposed, the same campaign is unleashed. The same scare tactics. The same threats. The same attempt to make politicians believe it is safer to accept the harm than to take up the political fight.
Every reform proposal is met with the same shrill warnings.
Clubs and pubs will close. Jobs will disappear. Sports clubs will fold. The sky, we are told, will fall.
It is a playbook borrowed from the National Rifle Association, designed to con the public about the problem and coerce politicians into staying quiet about the solutions at hand.
Reducing the number of machines, turning them off for longer periods, forcing venues to uphold harm-reduction requirements. All these measures can make a difference while clubs and pubs are assisted to transition to a better, less-destructive business model.
All that is required is for our party, for all sides of politics, to face up to this tragedy unfolding in our neighbourhoods.
The question for NSW Labor is not whether poker machines cause harm. We know they do. The question is whether we still have the courage to confront powerful interests when working people are paying the price.
That has always been Labor’s most noble tradition. It should be again today.
