three cheers for kev, page-3

A very commendable act.

VICTORIA will become the first Australian state to remove automatic teller machines from the floor of pokies venues, as Kevin Rudd considers a national ban.

Cash machines will be banned from the end of 2012, when Victoria's existing gaming licensing arrangements end. The move is designed to reduce problem gambling.

Anti-pokies campaigner Reverend Tim Costello congratulated the state government but questioned why the ban couldn't be implemented sooner. "I don't see why it shouldn't take place immediately," he said.

Premier John Brumby said the state government would encourage the gaming industry to remove ATMs before 2012. He acknowledged that some regional towns with a limited numbers of ATMs may be exempt from the ban.

Mr Brumby has said he proposed the plan to the Prime Minister at a recent meeting and Mr Rudd supported the idea.

Mr Rudd has signalled a major national review of the industry in a bid to break gambling addictions, including consideration of a national ATM ban near pokies.

Cost

But Mr Costello, a Baptist minister and World Vision chief, said a nationwide ban would be a big challenge given how much revenue state governments around the country claimed each year from the pokies industry.

"State governments effectively have this compromised ethical argument that says without pokies revenue we can't run essential services like health or education," Mr Costello said on Sky News today.

"No other jurisdiction in the world says, 'we've got to break up families, communities, and create new crops of criminals in order to run essential services'."

Mr Brumby said he did not know what sort of effect it would have on pokie revenues. Victoria collects close to $1 billion in tax from poker machines each year.

Mr Brumby said he was not sure whether venues with multiple entertainment areas would be allowed to have ATMs in non-gaming areas, but that detail would be revealed when the new laws were introduced.

Four-year delay

Mr Costello said he suspected the delay was due to the possibility the Victorian government could tomorrow announce new licences to run the state's $2.5 billion-a-year gaming machine industry, post 2012.

He called for a six-month moratorium of the licence decision to allow other groups to tender.

Mr Costello said more than half of the profits from pokies came from the 8.5 per cent of people who played the pokies all the time.

"If you're going to really help addicted people, banning ATMs is a great start. Chasing your losses with easy access to ATMs is one of the biggest traps for addicts.

"You can lose $1200 in an hour on machines - nowhere else in the world has loss rates like that."