IF Julia Gillard backs away from her timetable to introduce meaningful changes to poker machines, it will disgust the members of the Gambling Impact Society of NSW.
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The society, whose members have almost all been serious poker machine gamblers or had family who were, met yesterday for one of their regular meetings at the Nowra Neighbourhood Centre.
"This was a really good opportunity for change; it was very exciting," society chairwoman Kate Roberts said, herself a gambling counsellor who has a family member who had been a pokie addict.
"It'll be disgusting [if Gillard drops it]," Debbie said.
She is a nurse whose former defence force husband repeatedly stole from their young family to fund his gambling habit.
The society's meeting had been called to organise one of its advocacy events, a seminar during Responsible Gambling Awareness Week in May.
But yesterday, having invited the Herald, members wanted to talk about the destruction high-intensity poker machines could wreak and why something needed to be done.
One young member, who did not want to be named or photographed, was working in a club when her habit got the better of her.
Her fiance had already taken control of their finances, so she stole tens of thousands of dollars from the till, got caught, and is now serving an 18-month suspended sentence.
She supports a strong pre-commitment system and lower betting limits: "Do I believe I was born a compulsive gambler? Certainly not. I definitely would have used it," she said of a pre-commitment system.
If she was forced to set limits, or not been able to gamble $9 with every slap of a machine, she may not have lied and stole to fund her habit.
Ms Roberts also spoke about the ubiquity of poker machines in the Illawarra and on the South Coast, and the tools used by pubs and clubs to draw people in.
Clubs, she said, raffle groceries to people playing pokies. At the Huskisson RSL yesterday, it was the "Meat the Butcher" raffle between noon and 2.30. On Tuesday, the raffle was "Grocery Grab".
Ms Roberts said clubs used loyalty card information so they could target high-gambling members and invite them in for free lunches, dinners, as well as birthday celebrations.
In contrast, she counselled gamblers who would bury their credit cards in their back yards, or mail their cards to themselves on a Friday, to try and exert some control over their lives.
"These clubs have records of people, and instead of using the information for prevention and reduction of harm they use it for marketing and promotion," Ms Roberts said. "These are big corporations disguised as community organisations."
