Who said that one voice can’t be heard? Not Susan Rennie, that’s for sure. Rennie, a Preston resident, was the sole objector to a proposal to put poker machines in the Stolberg Beer Cafe hotel… and she won.

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Note: the Pokie Detox will no longer be held in the last two weeks of November. At this stage, I’m aiming for mid-December, to cover the lead-up to Christmas.

Do you play the pokies? It’s an interesting question in the context of this blog. I’m aware that the majority of my readers are anti-gambling, or reformed gamblers, but I hope that there are still quite a few people finding their way here who are struggling with gambling in their lives, and that they can find something here that may help. It doesn’t even have to be something I’ve written; when it comes to dealing with gambling addiction, no one can afford to be that precious. I have links to a number of gambling help sites, and I know that they are accessed from time to time. Hopefully that makes a difference.

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Regular visitors to cyenne.com would have noticed that I occasionally move things around a little, looking for the best way to present the site and everything it contains. Sometimes I move things, or reorganise them (like my About Me pages); and sometimes I add things. One recent addition was my pokies spending tally, over there on the right in big red text.

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Over the past month, since Julia Gillard and Andrew Wilkie shook hands and the prospect of a minority Labor government became that much more likely, there has been quite a lot written and spoken about pre-commitment technology for poker machines. There has been hysteria, recriminations and threats; there have been warnings of the impending collapse of Australia’s network of clubs and the end of our gambling industry… not to mention agenda-driven misdirection and outright lies. There have been nuggets of truth in amongst the morass, but the overwhelming majority of print space given to pre-commitment technology has been negative and designed to cloud the issue and smear the concept.

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About a month ago, on 4th October, the VCGR handed down a landmark decision. After a lengthy application and assessment process, they rejected an application from Jan Juc’s Beach Hotel to install 30 poker machines. This was after Jan Juc’s council had already rejected a development proposal for the hotel, of which the poker machines were a key component.

I wrote about this decision at the time, but to recap briefly, this was a case of the community rising up to make their voice heard. Coordinating the town’s opposition to the proposed development was local Jeremy Ham, who created the Facebook group Don’t Poke Jan Juc. This group was instrumental in getting the people of Jan Juc organised against the proposal.

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We all know how annoying it can be to go out for a drink, a meal or just to catch up with friends… only to find that the pub you’ve chosen is a pokies pub. There’s something different about the atmosphere in pokies pubs, it’s almost as if they’re not quite paying enough attention to their non-gambling patrons.

Whether you’re a non-gambler, an ex-gambler, or simply don’t want to put up with the lights and the awful beeping music, there are times when it’s nice to be able to get out and not have to deal with the pokies.

With that in mind, I present cyenne.com’s list of pokie-free pubs in Victoria.

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Regular readers will know by now that I used to have a gambling problem. The pokies were my poison. This was back in the mid to late 90s, and I remember that a number of the venues I used to frequent were, at one time or another, 24-hour pokie barns.

These days, outside of the casinos there are no 24-hour gambling venues. Sure, that’s a good thing but here in Victoria we have something almost as bad: the early openers.

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Back on the 1st of October, 2010, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Vanda Carson about the practice of using poker machines as “money laundries.” This article had a strong focus on the idea that the government was trying to bring in pre-commitment technology to combat these money-laundering operations, rather than problem gambling, and that they were keeping quiet about it to avoid causing further harm to the hotel industry’s image.

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It doesn’t feel right, to be writing about this in a blog. But some things need to be said, whether you want to broach the subject or not.

A coroner’s report out of South Australia today identified poker machine problem gambling as the driving reason behind the suicide of Katherine Natt, single mother of two, in 2006. Katherine overdosed on paracetamol and neurofen, after racking up debts totalling $100,000 on the pokies.

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When I’m not playing with my kids, or blogging about gambling shenanigans, I work in Melbourne’s CBD. My trip to work takes me to Southern Cross station, and past the construction site of the Mail Exchange Hotel on Bourke St.

This morning, I noticed that it wasn’t a construction site any more. The signs were lit, the doors were open and there was a bouncer standing out the front. Big guy too. The Mail Exchange Hotel was open for business… just after 8 in the morning. And what sort of business does a hotel partake in at 8 in the morning in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD?

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It’s been a little quiet on the news front over the past few days, especially after the club-driven frenzy over fingerprinting and pre-commitment technology. Still, there’s always something going on.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that Clubs Australia was writing to each of its 10 million members, urging them to tell their MPs not to support mandatory pre-commitment technology for poker machines. Well, as it happens I’ve got my hands on a copy of one of these letters, and it makes for interesting, if predictable, reading.

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The little town of Jan Juc on Victoria’s surf coast is a quiet place for much of the year. There aren’t many people, and there certainly aren’t any pokies. Neighbouring Torquay has always had more than enough to make up for that.

So when the local Beach Hotel lodged an application for 30 poker machines, it sparked a wave of community protest not seen since Romsey went to the Supreme Court to keep pokies out of their town. And today, the people of Jan Juc won their battle. The VCGR handed down their decision on the Beach Hotel’s application, and for the first time in 2010, they said no.

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Lost amongst the deluge of “fingerprinting” stories in the press over the last couple of days, this story appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. I admit I only gave it a cursory glance when I first saw it. But when one of my regular readers (and apparently I actually do have regular readers!) from NSW contacted me for my thoughts on the article, I decided to give it a closer look.

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Two days on, and the media frenzy over “fingerprinting to play pokies” continues. If we ever needed proof that Clubs Australia can exert undue influence over our media outlets, this is it.

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I nearly had to drop Burswood Casino into my Sneaky Bastards file today. I still might.

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