The South Sydney Leagues Club directors who have contrived to scuttle Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court’s ground breaking attempt to banish pokies from the venue should hang their heads in shame.
On Sunday an AGM will be held at Redfern Town Hall to decide the fate of Crowe and Holmes a Court’s visionary proposal.
It's likely the proposal will be defeated because of manoeuvrings some time ago by directors opposed to the pokies ban lead by one Frank Zappia.
Basicly Zappia orchestrated to make it almost impossible for the proposal, which included plans for the clubs future financial viability post pokies, to go though by setting an impossible deadline for the necessary arrangements to be made.
How sad.
Especially when you consider the damage pokies are doing to the socio-economically depressed residents of Redfern, Waterloo, Darlington and other nearby suburbs.
South Sydney leagues could have served as an example for the rest of the state. A state suffering an epidemic of pokies.
Though pokies are now taken for granted here, we actually have a phenomenally large amount of the infernal one-armed bandits.
Australia has a massive 21% of the world’s poker machines. Yes that’s right you read right. They drag $10 billion from the wallets of working families around the country each year – $5 billion of that from families in NSW.
And while Victoria has 30,000 pokies NSW has 95,000.
There are at least 220,000 Aussies struggling with gambling addiction because of pokies. They make up 80 percent of all problem gamblers. It is estimated that each problem gambler adversely affects up to seven others – wives, husbands, and children. That’s 2.5 million people.
Unsurprisingly poor suburbs have the worst problem. A recent landmark state government audit found some families in Sydney’s west and south are gambling away up to three quarters of their disposable income.
Why? Because state governments, who have very few ways they can raise revenue, are simply addicted to the money. They are so gutless that they won’t reduce pokies and then be honest with the electorate and introduce some other fairer taxes.
So South Sydney members, and directors, should think very hard about what they are doing between now and Sunday. The fate of the most vulnerable in the Redfern community, of which I am a member, is in their hands.
