You’ll notice its emissaries don’t usually try. The deep-pocketed, politically entrenched pokies lobby in NSW knows it will never win the moral argument. In fact, a poll taken just last month by the Sydney Morning Herald, in light of NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s election promises, showed that 60 per cent of voters back a mandatory cashless card for poker machines – with just 16 per cent of those polled opposing any reform. And support for reform has gradually built over the past decade. Sixty-seven per cent of Australians asked in a 2011 Essential Research poll supported reforms to gaming laws such as the mandating of pre-commitment technology. Yet the moral argument against gaming machines has failed to land with government and much of the industry, even though it’s widely accepted by the public. That kind of harm is compounded by the fact that Australia has a unique obsession with pokies, housing 76 per cent of the world’s non-casino gaming machines. Study after study demonstrates that poker machines contribute to an increase in domestic violence, bankruptcy, homelessness, child neglect, depression and suicide wherever they are present in the community. The simplest answer I can give is the most well-known: that poker machines are a moral hazard, purpose-built to prey on the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. It’s also leading the way in Australia – NSW has half of the nation’s pokies. A fair question, really, given that our state carries the second highest quota of so-called “brickie’s laptops” in the world, behind only Las Vegas. I’m often asked, as the CEO of one of the only pub groups in Sydney that doesn’t operate poker machines, what on earth I’m thinking.

Aussie term pokies