With the AFL season behind us, Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium has become available for other uses. One of these took place recently when the Gaming Executive Summit Australasia was held there, from 12-14 October. One of the key speakers was our own Sen. Nick Xenophon, and his speech was an absolute cracker.

Here is the transcript of Nick’s speech. Enjoy.

(continue reading…)

It may have taken 17 days, on top of one of the shortest and strangest election campaigns I can remember… but we finally have a government and a prime minister. A minority government, sure, but the wait is finally over. And with Independents Oakeshott and Windsor joining Wilkie and the Greens in throwing their weight behind Labor, our political landscape will never be the same.

(continue reading…)

I’ve held off on commenting too much about this over the past week or so, but here we are. Two weeks out from the Federal Election of 2010, and to date neither of the major parties have said a word about problem gambling. Nothing. As far as they’re concerned it’s a non-issue.

(continue reading…)

As I discussed here, it seems that our politicians have no policies when it comes to gambling reform. No policies to tackle problem gambling. No inclination to change the gambling landscape in this country… and let’s face it, when you look at countries with the highest number of poker machines, and look at the relative populations, sadly Australia comes out on top of the heap. More about that another time.

So if our pollies have no intention of reforming our gambling industry, I guess I’ll have to donate some policies of my own. Ms Gillard? Mr Abbott? Feel free to make use of any of the following.

(continue reading…)

So it’s been a few months since the Productivity Commission’s second report into gambling was released by the government (the first was in 1999). In a nutshell, there are at least 100,000 problem gamblers in this country, possibly up to half a million, with many hundreds of thousands more Australians impacted by problem gambling behaviours and actions every year. Almost half of the money spent on gambling comes from problem gamblers, and this is almost $5 billion a year. The report recommended a large number of actions to be taken to reform the industry and prevent, or minimise, the harm that gambling can cause.

Since then, a lot has happened. Kevin Rudd was shown the door and Julia Gillard has taken over the top job. An election has been called, for August 21. Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott are climbing over each other to promote their policies which will either Move Australia Forward or Stand Up For Australia, depending on who you listen to.

(continue reading…)