High stakes down under

Plans for ?mega-casinos? in Britain have caused uproar. Australia?s experience reveals the risks of giving people easy access to the temptations of gambling

YOU can see them from the other side of Melbourne?s Yarra river: flames shooting high into the air on the hour, every hour, every night. They draw the crowds from miles around, people lured by the drama of the flames, the glamour of the place, and the promise of sudden riches. For this is one of Australia?s giant casinos, a complex offering people the chance to gamble 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a place dubbed by its owners ?a world of entertainment?. It is a place without clocks, so imperceptibly do night and day slip past within the gaming areas of its vastness.

Australians have never lacked opportunities, or an appetite, for gambling. Until the Sixties, Australia?s gambling bug was satisfied by relatively small operators such as unlicensed starting price bookmakers, often operating in alleys near hotels. Then government-authorised totes were introduced and, in New South Wales, poker and fruit machines.

Today, though, Australia is a very different place. A relaxation in the law has led to the spread of casinos and an increase in ?pokies?, as the poker machines are known, causing a huge rise in the number of people gambling ? and the number of people who have ended up in serious debt.

Now the Government in Britain is attempting to change the law on gambling as well, with proposals to increase the number of casinos clearing an important first hurdle in Parliament on Monday. The Gambling Bill proposes removing slot machines from the high street, where they are accessible to children, and instead placing them in new, licensed Las Vegas-style casinos with unrestricted opening hours. But the Government?s plans have caused uproar, with protests about the dangers of increased access to gambling coming from Labour backbenchers, the Opposition, charities and the Church. But how dangerous are the plans? And will they really lure the vulnerable into casinos?

The experience of Australia gives some indication of what the impact might be.

It is 30 years since the advent of casinos there, and today Australia has 13, with at least one in each of the country?s six states and two mainland territories. Although many other forms of gambling exist, the scale and presence of casinos have made these temples of pleasure a focus of concern about the fate of individuals and the common good.

Since the first casino, Wrest Point, opened in the Tasmanian capital, Hobart, in 1973, they have spread to regional centres, such as the tropical cities of Cairns and Townsville in north Queensland and the heart of the outback, Alice Springs.

They occupy a prominent harbourside site in Sydney, a former railway building in Adelaide and, perhaps most tellingly for those who believe that revenue-hungry state governments are the biggest gambling addicts of all, a splendid colonial-era treasury building in the Queensland capital, Brisbane.

In Melbourne, the casino run by Crown is on a vast stretch of former industrial land, and its riverside promenade has become a tourist attraction in its own right. The complex includes a luxury hotel, a ballroom, showroom, bars, cinemas, shops, restaurants and food courts. It opened on its present site in May 1997, shortly before the Asian economic crisis, with an emphasis on attracting high rollers, who would be f?ted as if they were kings in return for risking their fortunes in Crown?s private gaming areas.

Apart from being put up in the Crown Towers hotel, they could use the casino?s exclusive golf course in Melbourne?s famed sandbelt ? a golfers? mecca.

When the economic crisis struck that year, Crown shifted its promotional focus to attracting local people, many of whose incomes were far less exalted. The appeal of casinos is undoubtedly broad. Crown is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week except for Christmas Day, Good Friday and Anzac Day on 25 April (Australia?s main day of remembrance for her war dead). On each of these days, it closes from 4 a.m. until 12 noon. The Crown bus programme caters for groups of 20 people or more on social or fundraising days out who spend at least four hours at the casino, which has special appeal to groups such as sporting or elderly citizens? clubs. The casino offers free meals and cash rebates to help with the cost of bus hire or fundraising.

In October, Melbourne?s Herald Sun newspaper reported that a Singapore tycoon, Thomas Tay, had lost A$25m. million (?10m.) in a two-year losing streak at Melbourne?s Crown Casino, dropping up to A$100,000 a hand on the baccarat tables.

?He?s all right if he?s winning . . . but if he?s losing, he tends to get pretty fired up with the dealer,?? a source told the paper.

The source said it was not uncommon for high-rollers to gamble non-stop for up to 18 hours in private gaming suites in Crown?s exclusive Mahogany Room. So-called ?high-rollers??, those who bet such huge sums of money, receive special privileges, but such largesse is not available to the vast majority of gamblers.

Crown has a strict policy of not discussing details of gamblers. ?I have never heard of a person called Thomas Tay, and even if I had I wouldn?t discuss him with you,?? a casino spokesman, Gary O?Neill, told the paper.

Among their critics are the Churches, which in Australian history have often been dismissed as ?wowsers?? (killjoys) for their perceived adherence to a commandment: ?Thou shalt not enjoy thyself.?? But the Churches and their welfare agencies, among others, are often left to pick up the pieces when the allure of gambling in its many forms turns to dust. In the days leading up to last month?s federal election, for instance, the Inter-Church Gambling Taskforce in Victoria and the South Australian Heads of Churches Gambling Taskforce called on all political parties to seriously respond to problem gambling in Australia.

Salvation Army officer John Dalziel, a spokesman for the Victorian taskforce, said that with A$15.4 billion lost on betting across Australia every year and new forms emerging that threaten to bring on a fresh wave of problem gambling, it was time for all political parties to make commitments to deal with the issue.

The taskforce said Australians lost an average of A$1,026 per adult in 2002-3. A total of A$9.1 billion was lost on electronic gaming machines, with more than 40 per cent of that coming from people with gambling problems. The growth of casinos has been accompanied by the nationwide growth of pokies in hotels, sports associations and clubs for former servicemen. Until the Nineties, Victorians wanting to try their luck on the pokies, which were not permitted in their own state, were a welcome source of revenue for towns on the New South Wales side of the Murray River. Busloads of gamblers would make a two to three-hour trek to the other side of the Murray to have their pokie ?fix??.

The costs to individuals and families are not the only concern. State and territory governments, which under Australia?s federal system may not collect income tax, are hungry for new sources of revenue to meet their commitments in areas such as public hospitals, schools and transport. Gambling taxes have been a rich and growing source, even as those same governments have responsibility for governing gambling operators and run advertisements warning of its dangers.

Earlier this year, when Victoria?s governing Labor Party held a fundraising function at Crown, critics attacked what they said was an unhealthy relationship between government and the gambling industry.

The Baptist minister and gambling reform advocate the Revd Tim Costello told the Sunday Age that the Labor Party should not hold functions at the casino because it sent the wrong message to Victorians.

?The State government, which is a major beneficiary from Crown and pokies, is also the regulator that is meant to prevent the damage caused by gambling,?? said Costello, brother of the federal treasurer (Australia?s chancellor of the exchequer). ?It is a clear conflict of interest and Crown should not be used for this type of fundraising.??

Dalziel said: ?They [the Government] don?t see gambling as a problem for the state. They see it as a wonderful earner and this event is a reflection of that attitude.??

Those behind the casinos point out that Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for June 2001 showed that the country?s 13 casinos employed more than 20,000 people, 60 per cent of them full-time. They generated a total income of A$3140m. with takings from gambling contributing 80 per cent of total income, and had an operating profit margin of 17.4 per cent.

These are not figures to be trifled with, even if governments and public opinion wanted an end to casinos. The casino operators argue that they are crucial to attracting visitors to cities and regions, that they pour money into public coffers, that they are big providers of employment, that they transform run-down urban areas into something new and attractive ? and that they cater to a public demand for leisure around the clock.

But for the Australian Churches and other critics that?s too high a price to be paid for the gambling craze that has swept up so many Australians in its wake.