The Introduction of Gaming Machines

In this chapter the “case” of the State of Victoria in Australia is presented: the decade from 1992 onwards when first electronic gaming machines (EGMs) and then a casino were made legally available, the population changes in the gambling attitudes and behaviours, the economic impacts and the complex set of social policies that were developed to assess, manage and prevent the harmful impacts arising from gambling. This “case” is intended neither as a moral argument nor a salutary tale, merely a description of a relatively small jurisdiction (3.6 million aged 15 years and older; ABS, 2003 census data) reacting politically and socially to the introduction of 30,000 EGMs. In the same period, of all the states and territories in Australia in which occurred similar changes in the availability of EGMs, the response of Victoria has been the most comprehensive, arguably setting International benchmarks in research, service delivery and harm minimisation (note possible conflict of interest for MD; see declaration at Preface).

The “snapshot” of Victoria provided by the 2001 census data (ABS, 2003) locates about one quarter of the Australian population in this state on the south-eastern corner of the continent. The 0.5% of the 4.6 million is of Indigenous origin, 52% are married (or de facto), 71% Australian born and over 80% dwell in urban settings.