RSL sub-branches and members have criticised the New South Wales executive for campaigning against gambling reforms, accusing senior leadership of being “tone deaf”.
The chief executive of the NSW RSL and Services Clubs, Margot Smith, has urged members to oppose the state government’s cashless gaming card and to help spread “a more balanced view of gambling”.
“With recent media scrutiny and political point scoring, we need to galvanise the industry to have a united voice where it counts,” Smith said in a newsletter to members.
“A quick Google search shows that gambling can be found as far back as 2,300 BC - and so for over 4,322 years, people have been enjoying taking a punt in one form or another through the ages as a form of entertainment.”
The NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, announced plans for a cashless gaming card in November, arguing the state had been “profiting off people’s misery” for too long.
Smith told members the card could result in “unintended consequences” and that action should be delayed until a digital solution, including a trial of digital wallets, had been conducted.
“Why rush a solution when we haven’t been able to solve it for five years or more? We need solutions to help problem gamblers and to keep money launderers out of our clubs, but we’re yet to be convinced that cashless cards would achieve this outcome,” she said.
The cashless gaming card was recommended by the New South Wales Crime Commission to address the billions of dollars in “dirty” money being gambled in pubs and clubs in the state every year.
Eamon Hale, president of the Hawthorn RSL sub-branch in Victoria, which has the largest cohort of post-Vietnam veterans in the country, said he was “disappointed” by Smith’s comments.
“RSLs across the country do good things for veterans, but they need to start doing things in a way that’s more morally righteous, more ethically pure,” Hale said. His sub-branch has no poker machines.
Hale said he wasn’t anti-gaming, but warned the RSL’s association with gambling was too strong and was hurting veterans.
“We are the RSL – one of the mainstays of our country that’s been here for 106 years – we should be a trusted organisation and unfortunately gaming, in the way it is currently regulated, isn’t trusted,” Hale said.
“It’s a practice that preys on vulnerable people and I don’t think the RSL – an organisation that is supposed to help vulnerable people – should be reliant on a business practice that preys on the vulnerable.”
RSLs in Victoria made more than $163m from gambling in the last financial year, but provided just $8.4m in donations, gifts and sponsorship, according to their own statements to the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission.
Dr John Crozier, an RSL member and chair of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons trauma committee, said Smith’s comments were harmful.
“This speaks of a representative that is tone deaf. They have clearly not received the message from a number of reasonable reviews, particularly from the NSW Crime Commission,” he said.
“They have breached their social licence by becoming entities focused purely on profit and on the social misery generated by the rapacious use of these gambling machines.”
Charles Livingstone, an associate professor of public health at Monash University, said most poker machine revenue came from people with gambling addictions or who were at risk of developing them.
“The Productivity Commission estimated 42% of the revenue is coming from people who are seriously in trouble or so-called problem gamblers, and another 20% coming from so-called moderate risk gamblers,” he said.
“This is not a minor problem.”
