Whether it is called buck-passing, blame-shifting or name-calling, the result is still the same.
Every time it occurs, a policy issue of significant importance to the community ends up being ignored, delayed or not dealt with by either tier of government.
Worse still, often both governments appear complicit in the delays.
Usually the reason is that one government or sometimes both stands to benefit financially from delays in taking action or changing policy.
As long as discussion papers, proposal documents, funding requests or the ubiquitous reviews and committee reports are circulating within the bureaucracies and ministerial offices of both state and federal governments, the argument can always be put that something, however slowly, is being done.
Government by avoidance would probably be a more apt description.
The damage being caused to Australians by poker machines is a perfect example.
Tasmania’s courts are the ideal venue for anyone wanting to find evidence of the tragedy and crime that results from poker-machine addiction.
In the past few months alone, appearing before the Magistrates Court has been:
Moonah chef Christopher Harvey, who stole $1100 from the staff footy tipping account to blow on the pokies in just one hour.
Pizza delivery man Mathew Royce Cooper, who trafficked marijuana alongside his pizzas, making more than $60,000 in a year to feed his poker-machine addiction.
Former football boss Noel Laurence Morrison, who stole $55,000 from employer AFL Tasmania because of a gambling addiction.
Who too could forget the terrible stabbing murder of fit and active grandmother, Barbara Risby, returning in broad daylight to her car on the Hobart Domain after an afternoon cruise in May 2007?
When her killer Mark John Adams was convicted in March last year, he chillingly told the Supreme Court he had planned to commit a robbery (resulting in the murder of Mrs Risby) after blowing the “grocery money” that morning playing poker machines in Hobart hotels.
In the past five years, 41 people have appeared before the Tasmanian Supreme Court charged over gambling-related thefts and burglaries involving $6.8thmillion.
The largest theft was $4.5thmillion and the smallest $539.
The cost to the Tasmanian taxpayer to jail the offenders was $3.8thmillion, or an average of $263 a person a day.
But the broader community anecdotally knows the cost of “playing the pokies” is much higher than that.
It is officially estimated that 0.54 per cent of the Tasmanian population, or about 2750 adults, are classed as “problem gamblers”.
The vast majority are addicted to the 3680 poker machines found in Tasmanian pubs and clubs, all owned and operated under a monopoly licence issued by the State Government to the Federal Group.
The recent report on gambling from the national Productivity Commission calculated 40 per cent of all money wasted on poker machines was gambled away by addicts.
In Tasmania, $224million is lost every year on the pokies.
…
Commissioned by the Brumby Government and conducted by University of South Australia researchers, the report found a significant relationship between spending on poker machines and the incidence of crime in Victoria.
The central finding of the report was “strong and robust evidence” of a significant link between gaming expenditure and crime, in particular “income-generating” crimes such as theft, robbery, fraud and handling stolen goods.
…
It followed earlier studies that have proved:
Adults spend more money on the pokies in poorer and less educated suburbs and towns.
Communities with a high rate of volunteering – and presumably a better community feel have less money lost on poker machines.
More poker-machine venues and the more pokies per suburb results in more money spent per adult.
…
The immediate response of the Victorian Government to its own report linking crime to poker machines was intriguing.
First it buried the report and its explosive findings without acknowledgement or fanfare … in obscurity on a government departmental website when it was received last month.
On Thursday, when the report claiming “strong and robust links” between crime and pokies losses was publicised, a Victorian Government spokeswoman claimed the findings were “complex” and needed to be studied further.
The Tasmanian Government has taken a rather similar approach whenever concerns about the social and financial harm caused by poker machines are raised.
Just last month, Treasurer Michael Aird claimed in parliamentary estimates hearings that it was impossible for the state to alone impose the $1 bet limit on poker machines recommended by the Productivity Commission to reduce losses by gamblers.
Read the full article in Mercury HERE
On Tasmanian Times:
James Boyce: Bullying has done its job
James Boyce has written extensively on pokies … dial James Boyce into the TT search engine … or pokies
