A pokies addiction put Carolyn Crawford in jail at the age of 64. She is convinced that cashless cards with a spending limit would have kept her from stealing more than $400,000.
It’s 3.24am on a Wednesday morning in the pokies room at a hotel in Melbourne’s south-east.
“The only way I can describe it to you is everything else is gone. You just go somewhere else because they mesmerise you. And poker machines are designed to do that.”Victorians lost $1.58 billion on them in pubs and clubs in the first half of this financial year. If the trend continues, the state is on track to record annual pokie losses of more than $3 billion for the first time.
Players will need to set daily loss limits of up to $100, monthly limits of up to $500 and annual limits of up to $5000, which can only be raised if the player proves they can afford it. ‘I’d never had a parking ticket in my life and here I was stealing money from a company’: Carolyn Crawford.In 2016 she was sentenced to jail at the age of 64 for stealing $407,000 from her employer to feed the pokies. “I’d never had a parking ticket in my life and here I was stealing money from a company.”
Crawford had a fabulous counsellor in jail, who helped her understand her addiction and its roots in the trauma she had experienced throughout her life. She has now paid all the money back. The Victorian government requires venues to enforce a responsible gambling code of conduct which says staff are expected to ask people to take a break if they are showing signs of gambling problems.No one ever intervened with Bardsley either. “How can you expect them to? They are hospitality staff. There are better things we can do to protect people.
These included maximum bets of $5, no ATMs, no 24-hour trade, voluntary pre-commitment systems for players, self-exclusion programs, winnings above $2000 to be paid by cheque and the responsible gambling code of conduct.Community Clubs Victoria was assured by the Victorian government At the time Ian, who asked that his surname not be used, had lost tens of thousands of dollars to the pokies over 25 years.
Ian tried using a self-exclusion program introduced in Victoria in 1997. Under the program gamblers can bar themselves from venues, with staff supposed to remember them from photos. Eventually, in 2014, Ian broke up with poker machines. “It’s a bit strange, but I actually looked at poker machines as a bad relationship that I’d given too many chances.”
Crawford watched the news item and thought about all the things that need to change to stop someone else ending up in prison.
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