- In short: One of the first cashless gaming trials in NSW found the technology made little difference to the behaviour of gamblers.
- The Wests New Lambton trial has received criticism from gambling reform advocates, who say it did not include a card with binding and default limits.
- What’s next?: The Independent Panel on Gaming Reform will provide findings from an expanded statewide cashless gaming trial.
Gambling in general, not just pokies.
Which bit? Yes ban all gambling advertising. It’s mostly sports betting that needs to take the hit there. Tax it all, yes, preferably in a way that isn’t directly translatable into higher fees for users, so like an increased land tax/rates bill, for example, rather than “5% of every gambling transaction”. But the pokies thing is very specific to Australian pubs and clubs. Poker isn’t really an issue, and sports betting obviously happens online and not in physically space, so it doesn’t really apply.
I agree to an extent.
My opinion is we need a bit of a brute force approach to help correct how far off course compared to the rest of the world we are.
Ban advertising.
Tax the venues with pokies - rla revenue profit model that makes having them in clubs / pubs net negative to anyone running a venue.
Tax online gambling, ban their advertising.
Block non conforming online gambling sites.
Etc.
We are over 5 times the per capita spend of second place on gambling spend globally. Until we aren’t first things need to drastically change.