There’s a long-forgotten history to Australia’s poker machine culture. First, the machines were largely foisted on an unsuspecting public when they were legalised in New South Wales in the mid-1950s. Second, there was a concerted campaign to ban them from the outset.
Today Australia is the poker machine capital of the world; with just 0.5% of the world’s population we have the unenviable distinction of housing 25% of the globe’s poker machines. Pokies have long carried a well-known dark side: high rates of personal addiction aggregated into community distress, especially in lower socioeconomic areas.
