On 19 September 1956, the NSW Parliament legalised poker machines in registered clubs.
Seventy years later, we are still counting the devastating and ever-growing cost of that decision.
1956, the year the Olympics first visited our shores, was a very different Australia. We built homes with asbestos. Lead was in our petrol and paint. Cigarettes were commonplace and their advertising was everywhere.
Over the decades, as the evidence of harm became impossible to ignore, we changed.
We stopped using asbestos. We took lead out of petrol. We restricted tobacco advertising.
We also made our cars safer.
Australia was a world leader in introducing compulsory seatbelt laws. Governments did not simply tell motorists that seatbelts saved lives and leave it to everyone to decide whether to wear one. They mandated a proven safety measure because the evidence showed it would prevent deaths and serious injuries.
Today, clicking on a seatbelt is second nature. What was once a significant intervention by government is now simply sensible public policy. One that has saved countless lives.
There is a lesson in that history. When the evidence changes, good public policy changes with it.
Yet one product of the 1950s has proved remarkably resistant to meaningful reform in NSW: the poker machine, all while poker machine technology has multiplied a machine’s harmful capacity.
When legislation to legalise poker machines was debated in 1956, there were parliamentarians who opposed it. One of my predecessors. Rev Sir Alan Walker, spoke prophetically of the terrible impacts the ‘one-armed bandits’ were likely to have.
Seventy years later, those concerns feel remarkably prescient. Even understated.
In the first six months of 2026, people in NSW lost a record $4.75 billion to poker machines, $311 million more than during the same period last year, an increase almost twice the rate of inflation.
The June quarter alone saw $2.38 billion lost. That is around $182 million a week, $26 million a day and almost $1.1 million every hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
For eight consecutive quarters, two straight years, poker machine losses in NSW have remained above $1 million an hour. We are now on track to crash through $10 billion in losses in a single year. These are not simply eye-watering, barely conceivable numbers on a government spreadsheet.
At Wesley Mission we see and hear the cost in human terms.
One person who shared their story with us watched their partner lose more than $4 million over six years, much of it in two Sydney pubs. During one six-month relapse, around $600,000 was lost, often during a single night each week between 11pm and 4am.
At three in the morning, while most of the city sleeps, someone can be sitting alone at a poker machine chasing losses and losing thousands of dollars. Why do we allow a product capable of causing this level of harm to keep operating through the night?
After 70 years, our political debate still too often treats meaningful and proportionate poker machine reform as something radical. It isn’t.
Turning poker machines off between midnight and 10am isn’t radical. Requiring account-based gambling with meaningful harm prevention measures built in isn’t radical. Giving someone experiencing gambling harm one effective way to exclude themselves from poker machine venues across NSW isn’t radical.
These are practical public health measures addressing what has become a poker machine fuelled public health crisis in NSW.
The NSW Government recently announced a package of gambling reforms containing positive measures. They should be acknowledged. Frankly, the reforms are yet more tinkering around the edges, an exercise in kicking the can for real reform down the road yet again. Its well-worn path travelled by successive NSW governments.
The problem is what remains undone. Account-based gambling remains voluntary and rather than extending mandatory poker machine shutdown hours, we have yet another review. I’m sick of meaningless, politically motivated reviews that ignores the compelling evidence already at hand.
If we accept that a measure can prevent serious harm, why would we design it so the people most at risk must choose to activate that protection?
Imagine if that had been our approach to road safety. We didn’t introduce seatbelts and say: we know these save lives, but whether you wear one is entirely up to you. We made them mandatory.
The people most at risk of gambling harm should not have to opt in to being protected.
The same principle applies to operating hours. There is no compelling public interest in allowing poker machines to take money from people at two, three or four o’clock in the morning.
Nothing good happens on a poker machine at 3am.
A midnight-to-10am shutdown provides a simple circuit breaker. It does not close pubs or clubs. It does not kill the night-time economy.
A vibrant night-time economy is people eating in restaurants, seeing live music, going to the theatre and meeting friends at their local club or pub. It is not someone sitting alone at a poker machine at three in the morning chasing thousands of dollars in losses.
Something else is changing. Communities are finding their voice.
Councils across metropolitan and regional NSW are backing stronger action on poker machine harm. Thousands of residents have also joined the Put Pokies in their Place campaign and made their voice heard by government. This grassroots momentum sends a message to the Minns government: communities are unwilling to accept gambling harm as simply the price NSW pays for having poker machines, the price of transferring wealth from the pockets of those who can least afford it into the pockets of billionaire pub barons and coffers clubs more like casinos.
There is a broader lesson in public health reforms of the past 70 years. Reform is rarely convenient.
Industries resist it. Governments worry about revenue. Arguments are made about personal responsibility, jobs and unintended consequences. Reviews are commissioned. More evidence is requested. All of that buys time.
Reform takes courage. The test of gambling reform is not how many announcements are made. The test is whether losses fall and fewer people experience harm. Right now, the numbers are heading in the opposite direction and fast.
NSW has had 70 years to understand poker machines. We have the data. We have the research. We have the lived experience. We have the evidence. What we lack is government willingness to act on it.
We cannot change the decision NSW made in 1956. We can decide whether another generation lives with its consequences.
Some things from 1956 belong in history.
It is time we put pokies in their place.
