Western Australia differs from the rest of the country in regards to the pokies, with strict gaming legislation in place to limit electronic gaming machines from being offered anywhere except the states only casino. We take a look at what playing the pokies in Perth is all about, what the casino has to offer as the sole provider of pokie machines and why playing online offers a convenient. Poker Machine, Cherry Master Game $ 2,312.00; IGT multi game Video poker machine w/ stand $ 1,292.00; Double Up Joker Poker Quarter Machine with Hi/Low & Odd/Even by Omega Products $ 679.99; IGT POKER MACHINE $ 2,040.00; IGT PE+ Player's Edge Plus Joker Poker Video Poker Slot Machine $ 2,040.00; Vintage Status Poker 25-Cent Machine – $500. Crown Perth holds a monopoly on gambling in Western Australia, and is the only place in the state where you’ll find electronic gaming machines. The casino makes up for the lack of pokies around the state by offering over 2,000 electronic gaming machines, including video poker, keno, and other mechanical games involving dice and dominoes. Western Australia Casino Pokies Guide. Online gambling is a lot of fun, and for players in Western Australia it’s one of the best ways to enjoy casinos in general. Fortunately, our team of experts has taken hundreds of hours to put together a list of the very best online casinos available to players in the area.
CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: The storm over strict regulations for poker machines is raging on the east coast with many clubs claiming they can't survive without the money gambling delivers, but it is a very different story in Western Australia.
There are no poker machines in WA's pubs, clubs or sporting venues and as Nikki Wilson-Smith found, it has one of the lowest problem gambling rates in the country.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH, REPORTER: For Perth footy supporters it doesn't get much better than this - Grand Final Day in the local comp is full of big kicks, hard hits and if you're lucky, one day ...
COMMENTATOR: Absolute elation there!
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: But there is a growing chorus around the country that you can't have the big win without a few of these.
EDDIE MCGUIRE: Without any consultation, to have what looks like being a footy tax imposed is going to absolutely hit football clubs right between the eyes.
TONY ABBOTT: This is one of the tens of thousands of community clubs right around Australia that would be in jeopardy.
ANTHONY BALL: The AFL and their clubs have concerns about mandatory pre commitment and that just is also the position that the NRL and many other groups have had.
RAY WARREN, FOOTBALL COMMENTATOR: It won't work and it will hurt. They're 100 per cent right. I've never seen a more stupid policy in all my life.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: But clubs and pubs in WA don't have pokies. They're only allowed in the casino and because they've never had gaming revenue, community sporting clubs have found other ways to make money.
WAYNE BRADSHAW, WAFL: Volunteers work very hard to raise money. It really comes down to the function of mixing your expenditure with your income and we've managed to do it without poker machine revenue.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: The WAFL carries out membership drives and it gets corporate sponsors on board to generate its $2.1 million turnover. Two AFL superstars, Ben Cousins and Buddy Franklin, started their careers playing in WAFL clubs which thrive without gaming revenue.
WAYNE BRADSHAW: From our perspective we're not in support of poker machines. We think that the social impact outweighs the benefit that arises out of the revenue that is generated and certainly our clubs are in the position where they don't require the poker machine revenue.
GEOFF GALLOP, FORMER WEST AUSTRALIAN PREMIER: I think a lot of other states look with envy at what we've achieved in Western Australia.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: Geoff Gallop is a well known supporter of the WAFL competition. The former WA Premier moved to Sydney five years ago and he says New South Wales clubs are hooked on their 100,000 pokies.
GEOFF GALLOP: Once these clubs get dependent on the revenue that comes from poker machines it's very hard to break the cycle, and these institutions, these clubs and pubs are addicted on poker machines, the thought of their addiction being taken away from them by government edict causes terrible withdrawal symptoms.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: New South Wales is home to about 3.6 per cent of the world's poker machines and those pokies generate about $3.5 billion a year for clubs and pubs. The Productivity Commission estimates that 40 per cent of that revenue comes from problem gamblers. In 2008, co owners of the Rabbitohs, Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court announced a plan to make South Sydney Football Club pokie free.
PETER HOLMES A COURT: I doesn't feel right for me, it doesn't feel right for Russel, it doesn't feel right for our football club.
ROY MASTERS, SPORTS JOUNALIST: Well, I think Peter Holmes a Court genuinely believed as one of the co owners of the Rabbitohs that poker machines were heinous and that the club could exist without the resources from poker machines.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: Then just as quickly, the plan was scuttled by the team's members, voting to let them stay.
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CLUB MEMBER: I like poker machines. I don't have a problem. If I have money, I will play them. If I don't, I don't.
CLUB MEMBER II: I think they're needed for the revenue to keep the club going.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: And not only did the club decide to keep pokies, it also signed a sponsorship deal with New South Wales' biggest poker machine operator, Star City Casino. After watching the Rabbitohs try to manage the issue, Geoff Gallop insists the West Australian model is better for the community.
GEOFF GALLOP: The level of problem gambling is lower here. People can still gamble and the vast majority of that money goes through the lotteries commission into the community. I think we're better than the other states.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: Sporting clubs in WA have no trouble attracting members, and according to the Productivity Commission, Western Australia has the second lowest rate of problem gambling in the country. The average amount spent on gambling each year is half that of a typical Victorian.
GEOFF GALLOP: I think when they look at Western Australia, they see, well, perhaps we don't have the big clubs, that's true, but I think we have a healthier lifestyle and of course we don't have those families being devastated by problem gambling.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: In the eastern states, Clubs Australia have been the most vocal critics of poker machine reform. Here in Western Australia, their counterpart Clubs WA is also in support of pokies. It wants the State Government to look into introducing them to community clubs, and it says organisations like the Willetton Sporting Club show why.
IAN MARSHALL, WILLETTON SPORTS CLUB: We are utilising the place far, far more. It's just a disappointing thing just the way it happened.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: The Willetton Sports Club has just gone into voluntary administration. Ian Marshall was manager at the time and says the cost of maintaining the ageing building became too much, despite having a turnover offer $1.1 million a year.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: What effect does it have on the community when a club like this closes?
IAN MARSHALL: Huge. We have got 5,000 members. I should say we had 5,000 members. That's 5,000 people whose children played here.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: Clubs WA argued that gaming revenue could keep clubs like Willetton in the black.
PETER SEAMAN, CLUBS WA: I guess it's about survival and I guess it's about tools to operate. In Western Australia we're denied some really good business tools that around the rest of Australia are able to use and do well with.
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: But even the club's former manager isn't convinced that pokies are a silver bullet.
IAN MARSHALL: I think the money that's raised by it has to have a home defined prior to raising it, so if we were $150,000 short and we had the ability to put slot machines in, poker machines in to raise the $100,000, then we've raised it and then we should be told to get rid of them.
PETER SEAMAN: If we're going to have gaming in this state, let the Government control it but also let the community get some benefit out of it.
Does Western Australia Have Poker Machines
NIKKI WILSON-SMITH: The West Australian Government isn't looking at changing its pokie laws any time soon and while it continues with its strict bans, the battle over harm reduction continues in other states.
GEOFF GALLOP: Federalism is a good thing and it's good that Western Australia is different because we can see the difference and we can learn from it. I think the second lesson is once you get locked into poker machines, it's a very dangerous course, but there is an alternative.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Nikki Wilson-Smith with that report.
Editor's note: (February 10) the original article incorrectly reported that NSW is home to 20 per cent of the world's poker machines. It also stated that South's League Club was announced to be pokie free, it was only the South Sydney Football Club that was intended to be pokie free.
Australia has more poker machines per person than any country in the world, excluding casino-tourism destinations like Macau and Monaco. It has nearly 200,000 machines – one for every 114 people.
This startling statistic resulted from a wave of pokie liberalisation during the 1990s that saw them introduced into pubs and clubs in every state and territory – except Western Australia.
To track the social impacts of this expansion, state and territory governments have commissioned surveys to measure the levels of gambling consumption and gambling-related harm. In total, more than 275,000 Australians have been interviewed in 42 studies of this kind since 1994.
We recently conducted an analysis of these studies to build a nationwide picture of how pokie gambling has changed across Australia over the past 25 years. We linked the participation rates reported by the surveys with government data on actual poker machine expenditure in pubs and clubs for each jurisdiction – converted into 2015 dollars to account for inflation.
The expenditure data exclude poker machines in casinos; these data are not disaggregated for government reporting purposes.
Consequently, the figures we present here should be considered minimums – especially in Tasmania and the Northern Territory, where a large proportion of pokies are located in casinos. WA is excluded from the expenditure analysis because it has no pokies outside Burswood Casino.
A recent gradual decline in pokie losses
Nationally, pokie losses in pubs and clubs increased fourfold between 1990 and 2000 before plateauing at around A$860 per adult per year in 2005. Since 2005, there has been a consistent gradual decline in gambling losses across the various jurisdictions. Throughout this period, pokie losses per adult in New South Wales have remained around 50% higher than the national average.
The biggest contributor to the decline since 2005 has been tobacco control, not gambling policy. The introduction of indoor smoking bans across Australia in the 2000s hit pokie revenues quite hard.
It is also likely that caps on pokie numbers – which have been relatively stable since 2000 – played a role in limiting pokie expenditure.
However, this should give no reason for complacency. The decline in pokie revenue is slowing, and possibly beginning to reverse in NSW, the NT and Queensland.
Current annual losses on pokies in pubs and clubs for Australia amount to $633 per adult. Losses in NSW are highest at $978 per adult and lowest in Tasmania at $283 per adult – although casinos play a more important role in Tasmania.
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These figures are very high by world standards. The losses by Australians on pokies outside of casinos dwarf those of any other comparable country. They are 2.4 times greater than those of our nearest rival, Italy.
These losses are even more anomalous when compared to non-casino gambling machines in other English-speaking countries. Australians lose three times more than New Zealanders, 4.1 times more than Canadians, 6.4 times more than the Irish, 7.5 times more than the British, and 9.8 times more than Americans.
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Falling numbers of pokie gamblers
The modest decline in losses since the mid-2000s has been driven by a falling number of people playing the pokies.
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The chart below shows the proportion of the adult population in each Australian state or territory that gambles on pokies at least once per year. These proportions are derived from the surveys described above. Each survey estimate is represented by a single dot.
Participation rates peaked shortly after pokies were introduced in the late 1990s at around 40% for the larger states. Since that time, participation has consistently dropped to below 30% across Australia and has fallen to less than 20% in Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT.
Amounts lost per gambler have remained constant
Dividing the pokie losses in clubs and pubs for each jurisdiction by the number of actual gamblers reveals the average amount lost per pokie gambler per year as shown by the chart below. Some lines on this chart are shorter than others because the survey-based participation data is not uniformly available.
The reduction in total pokie losses since 2005 has not been matched by a corresponding decline in losses per individual gambler. After a reduction due to the smoking bans, losses per gambler appear to have plateaued – with some jurisdictions trending up (ACT and NT) and others down (NSW and SA).
This suggests that while fewer people are playing the pokies, the amount of money lost per gambler has remained relatively constant. And this amount appears very high.
The amount lost per pokie gambler (just in pubs and clubs) in both NSW and Victoria is around $3,500 per year, or around $65 per week. The ACT sits at around $3,000 per gambler per year, followed by the NT and Tasmania at around $1,500 per year.
To put this in some perspective, the average Australian adult spent $1,245 on electricity and gas in 2014-15.
And while we now have concerted government action to reduce energy costs, the regulatory reforms required to reduce the amount of losses for pokie gamblers are not on the legislative agenda in most of Australia.