Kate Seselja spent hours sobbing in front of an electronic gambling machine when her addiction was at its worst. She was staring at the glowing $0 balance.
Her husband, who had called “a hundred times” in worry, kept phoning intermittently, getting increasingly frantic to find her.
She was overcome with dread and guilt and contemplated suicide but decided against it because she was expecting her sixth child.
She tells the BBC, “I was so mentally, physically, emotionally done with this existence, this addiction.”
But I could not think of a way to end my life while sparing hers.
She had lost roughly A$500,000 ($273,000; $336,000) after 12 years of destructive gaming.
The alarming nature of Ms Seselja’s tale is tempered by one in every 100 Australians struggles with a gambling addiction.
According to H2 Gambling Capital, if gambling losses were averaged throughout the whole adult population of Australia, each person would lose around A$1,200 annually. This is a lot more than other countries have.
However, Australia might be about to implement the most significant changes to the sector since the machines were initially made legal in 1956.
With only 0.33% of the global population, Australia is home to a fifth of all pokie machines.
Numerous bars, clubs, and hotels are also filled with rows of machines in addition to casinos. They make around $13 billion a year, which is more than what casinos, lotteries, and sports betting put together.
Recent investigations have revealed that the devices are being utilized in Australia for money laundering. Opponents counter that this is nothing compared to the cost to them personally.
Research has revealed that the machines, which are frequently located in regions of socioeconomic disadvantage, play a role in poverty, domestic violence, financial crimes, domestic abuse, and suicides.
Nobody warned me about playing slots, Ms Seselja claims. “You’re taught about smoking and drinking alcohol.”
So, per her boyfriend’s advice, she entered a $20 bill into a machine one evening when she was 18 years old. She gained hundreds right away.
Ms. Seselja recalls her heart thumping in response as the lights flashed and the machine sang. It gave me the impression that I was intelligent or lucky.
There were pokies available “every time you went out with friends,” she claims. It’s not as if I left house intending to go gambling tonight.
However, Ms. Seselja soon started putting all of her money into the machines. She started deceiving close friends and family, robbing her family’s business, and maxing out credit cards one after the other.
She cries, “I quickly changed into someone I didn’t recognize.” But now that I realize how vulnerable I was against addiction as a consumer, I feel compassion for her.
Electronic gaming machines (EGMs) are said to be particularly addictive because, according to researchers like Charles Livingstone, they are built to supply the brain’s feel-good hormone, dopamine, “in spades,” even when players are losing money.
It would be difficult to find a worse example of the exploitation of a vulnerable society by a legal but poorly regulated product than the [poker] industry in Australia, according to Dr. Livingstone of Monash University, speaking to the BBC.
Len Ainsworth, the man who popularized pokies in Australia, previously dismissed the idea that they are addicted, calling it “nonsense.”
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted him as saying, “I mean, if you like something you’ll keep doing it… it’s like kissing girls,” in 2017.
The machines are also defended by Australia’s Gaming Technologies Association, which claims that they were created in accordance with laws that place “fairness, probity, and harm minimization” as “paramount objectives.”
It also cites a 2018 lawsuit that was unsuccessfully brought against a maker of slots. A judge for the Federal Court concluded that the applicant had not presented enough proof that the machine’s characteristics were addictive and deceptive.
A spokeswoman stated, “Playing EGMs is a respectable recreational activity that many Australians enjoy safely.
That justification is absurd, in Ms. Seselja’s opinion. She claims that it is hardly innocent amusement if it can rob you of $10 every three seconds.
Australia has a strong desire for change, and a New South Wales (NSW) election on Saturday may do just that.
Advocates claim that NSW is “the beating heart” of gambling in Australia because it has half of the country’s pokie machines.
Both the opposition and the state administration have vowed to support problem gambling-related policies. If re-elected, the administration of Premier Dominic Perrottet has also pledged to make all machines cash-free within five years and to mandate that all players set spending limits.
According to Mr. Perrottet, the government could not continue to “profit off people’s misery.” It got around $2 billion in pokies tax revenue in 2020–2021.
If the reforms had been in place when I was 18, Ms. Seselja claims, “my life would not have taken that 12-year trajectory.”
However, some of the premier’s idea has encountered adamant criticism. George Peponis, the head of the lobbying group ClubsNSW, stated in January that his organization supported barring felons and problem gamblers from club gaming rooms rather than outlawing the use of cash.
The opposition can make things challenging. Independent federal legislator Andrew Wilkie is all too aware of this.
Similar gambling regulations were negotiated by him with the federal government in 2010, but the agreement was rapidly put under a lot of strain.
Governments were hesitant to give up major tax revenue streams. Mr. Wilkie claims that he was up against a potent lobby group led by ClubsNSW, which he compares to the National Rifle Association in the US.
Large political and community funders in Australia for years, such as ClubsNSW, pushed against the revisions, claiming they endangered clubs’ viability.
MPs were lobbied, and there was a significant advertising campaign. Mr. Wilkie even asserts that his effigy was set ablaze during a pro-gambling rally in New South Wales.
“They became irrational. And they triumphed, says Mr. Wilkie. In essence, the administration “chickened out” and abandoned the agreement.
Victor Dominello, a former minister for the NSW government, claimed similar treatment last week.
In response, ClubsNSW stated that in the same way as of “hundreds of peak bodies and businesses [do] on a daily basis,” it worked hard to represent interests of NSW clubs and communities they serve.
A spokeswoman stated, “Our expectation is that these activities are carried out in an appropriate manner, as well as where they are not, appropriate action is taken.”
If Mr. Perrottet’s administration in NSW is re-elected, according to Mr. Wilkie, it may be a “watershed moment.”
“You get reform in NSW, and you’ve got the solution: you get reform for half the poker machines in the country.”
“And the dam wall will have collapsed; it won’t be possible for other states not to eventually follow suit.”
Ms. Seselja, who now supports gambling reform, is less enthused. Polls have not shown that the government would take back power, and she has felt let down by politicians far too frequently.
However, she thinks that a change in community opinion is encouraging.
There is a time and place for individual accountability, but there hasn’t been a place or a time for an open and honest debate about this addiction in this nation, according to her.
“We are the world’s most harmful gambling nation, ranking first overall. There’s a serious problem there, and it might not be [me].
