We hear a great deal about the huge damage caused to society by gambling. And it’s a fact that some gamble to excess – that they deprive their families of essential funding. It’s a fact that some are driven to theft or fraud to cover their gambling debts and it’s a fact that often, these poor tortured souls are driven to suicide.
Many justify gambling, in particular pokie machines, by pointing out that the gaming trusts provide millions of dollars to sporting and cultural groups throughout the country. And they do, but in many ways that too is a problem we have to cope with in society.
It seems that these days cultural, sporting and dare I say it, local authorities seem hell bent on building edifices and empires and their plans usually depend on some funding from gaming trusts.
When I was a kid, I used to love going to working bees with my father. He was always involved in some community project and most of these were funded by bottle drives, cake stalls, bring and buy days – all good community stuff.
As I grew up I joined Rotaract – a sort of junior Rotary and then Jaycees and was involved in all sorts of projects for the benefit of our community. The fact that neither of these groups even exist now tells us something.
Now sporting and cultural groups seem to meet and decide what projects they can undertake depending on the availability of funds from Lotto or the gaming trusts. If sufficient funding comes through they pay someone to undertake tasks that previously, they would have done themselves voluntarily as a group.
In sport we have an army of people driving around in a fleet of cars, encouraging kids to play sport.
We have a local body building a fifty million dollar edifice in the middle of nowhere, supposedly to encourage kids to play sport although how kids from poor families are meant to get there I don’t know.
Imagine if those fifty million dollars was put into a fund. It would earn a real return of say two to three million dollars per year and that money could be put into sports facilities and equipment in the communities where it is so badly needed.
But today it’s all about empires and edifices funded to a very real extent from gambling and sadly the days of true volunteerism are gone.
In my view we are certainly no better off for that fact.
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