This is the prediction of John Connolly, of Creditline in Sydney. Credit Line, an off-shoot of Lifeline. He said last week that all the international and Australian experience with new casinos is that pawn-broking shops open near casinos within six months to a year.
So there is money to be made from the casino, he says with irony, preying on the victims.
Mr Connolly says Canberrans can expect an increase in the call on welfare services. However, they will be slow to recognise it as a gambling problem. Gamblers hide their problem, and welfare people might not have the experience to identify it. The right questions won’t be asked.
Welfare people tend to take people at face value, and gamblers can be very cunning. In Canberra the experience would be limited to the TAB and poker machines.
Mr Connolly said once a casino was set up, it attracted people who beforehand had not gambled. Some of those would fall victim to compulsion. Very simply, more people would get into trouble and seek welfare help. That was the experience with the Central Mission after the Adelaide casino opened. It was the experience everywhere.
“”Then there is the increase in employee fraud,” he said. “”We estimate an increase of 24 per cent in employee fraud if a casino is set up in a city to finance gambling.
“”It can’t be prevented; it is proven throughout the world. We’re realistic; we see the victims.
“”A new clientele is being created all the time. The casino will advertise it. And the locals will get hurt.”
International experience showed casinos liked occasional big wins by high-rollers. In the US, casinos paid them to come. Their big wins re-inforced the behaviour and expectations of others.
From a casino’s point of view, the theory works like this A small gambler can go in with $50 and perhaps win $50. A high roller might go in with $40,000 and win $40,000, the chance of doing so is about the same. However, when word of the $40,000 win gets put about, the small players wrongly assume or fantasise that they can win $40,000 with their $50, and it encourages them to gamble on.
Creditline experience shows most gamblers won’t admit to gambling as a cause of problems. A specialist service is needed. Counsellors have to be trained. For example, they have to look for: a history of consolidating loans for no apparent financial reason (it gets creditors off the back); high-interest loans; pawn-broker dealings; large number of credit cards; PO box numbers or office address on accounts; store accounts where they sell electrical or portable items; the mysterious friend at work who must be paid at all costs.
Gamblers Anonymous has set up the 24-hour Gambling Crisis and Counselling Service on 2963411.
Mr Connolly welcomed this. Help had to develop in tandem with the establishment of a new casino. Queensland, for example, had recognised the problem too late.
Professional help programs should be set up with some of the money that came to government from the casino, he said.
A committee of the Legislative Assembly is looking at suggestions on how to spend the money. (Inquiries to Rod Power on 2050435.)
The general manager of the Casino Canberra, Heinz Resmann, who has piloted the establishment of the casino in Canberra, pontificated that dealing with compulsive gamblers is a job for the Government.
“”It is not a casino-specific problem,” he said. “”It is good to have the service, but the Government should do it. The Government got between 30 and 35 per cent _ a huge piece of the action.
“”It would look silly if we contributed. It would look like were getting rid of our bad conscience.”
The casino had trained its management. It we saw breadwinners losing all their money, we would do ourselves a disservice if we did not take them aside and tell them to stop. But it had to be handled with care because the casino could be accused to cutting their chance to win back their loses. But the casino was a public place.
“”We cannot bar them,” he said.
The casino debate has ravaged the pages of The Canberra Times for nearly 20 years. The debate has centred around whether to have a casino, or not to have a casino. In that debate the Government’s full role has escaped scrutiny.
Sure, it is up to government to legislative to prohibit gaming or permit it. The more fundamental question is whether it should tax it or not.
Governments can’t hope to control people’s lives, but it is damned hypocrisy to prey on people who can’t control their lives themselves.
Talking to John Connolly, Ben and Garry, it is nonsense to suggest that it is a question of willpower or if it is not people will gamble anyway, casino or not.
A lot of people wouldn’t be seen dead in the TAB. Many find poker machines too boring or look down their noses at them socially. Some people who have never gambled seriously in their lives will go to the casino with a group socially and their compulsion will manifest itself _ a compulsion that would otherwise not get an outlet. These are people who would not otherwise go to a TAB or a club.
Accept for the moment, the US psychiatric research that half to one per cent of the population have the compulsive-gambling tendency, and that perhaps a fifth will fall to the compulsion within a couple of visits to the casino. Take the projected visiting figures of the casino. Take the huge example of the huge poker-machine turnover in the ACT. The result is perhaps 100 wrecked lives a year directly because of the casino.
GA’s experience within the first week suggests that is probable.
Obviously, there is another side. The casino will bring more income than rates to a hard-pressed government. Jobs. Tourism.
The civil-liberties argument, which appeals to me, suggests people should run their own lives and there is an inevitable by acceptable risk that they might run them badly. The logical extension of that is to permit any number of casinos, but without tax. But no government would tolerate that.
We have a single, controlled casino in Canberra only so a government can noiselessly milch people who are otherwise too selfish or too afflicted with the hip-pocket-nerve syndrome to tolerate it being done through the rates or tax system.
In the ACT, gambling revenue is about equal to rates revenue already. Instead of taxing property, income and transactions, the government has found a way to tax stupidity and a compulsive psychiatric disorder. The former is mere hypocrisy; the latter is an organised crime.