The book says, to earn peopleâs respect in England youâd be best to marry into a family with a long and distinguished lineage. (Though marrying into Royalty these days seems to make you more âfair gameâ than respected!) In Arab countries, itâs praying in the Mosque 5 times a day. But in Australia, if you want to be respected, you must become a heavy and committed gambler.
The book says that unimaginative Europeans, brought up to regard gambling as wasteful, fail to see how risking a large percentage of your weekly income on a horse running 3000 kms away, can be an expression of oneâs respectablility.
Australians, of course, know better. They realize that more than a flag, an anthem or a coast to coast highway, a nation gambling as one will always be united against all odds.
True, every country has pockets and bits of gambling, but they are seen more as something to be done on the quiet in oneâs spare time, and with help of a few shady individuals. No German or Italian politician would dream of flaunting their gaming habits to family, colleagues or their electorate. Even in âan amoral country like Franceâ (says the book), gambling is seen as something one performs on the quiet, a habit somewhere between picking your nose and snatching handbags on the subway.
Australians, the book says, were the first ones to break through these old world taboos. Far from apologising for it, weâve made gambling the cornerstone of the nationhood and in the 80âs it was still used the way Popes used religion to unite medieval Europe.
There is an intricate network covering the whole country for this purpose:
Racecourses, dog tracks, poker machines by the thousands (if not millions!), lottery agencies, TAB offices, Bingo houses, trotting meets, stock exchanges, art-union mailouts, church raffles, write in competitions, lotto promotions, instant prizes, soccer pools, Tatts Keno, multitude of TV game shows to win prizes and cash, scratchie (scratch and win) tickets, and even cockroach races.
You may hear in fact mysterious incantations wherever you go
âEleven and 25 always come up togetherâ
âThe 3rd in the 4th looks goodâ
âI was told Iâd only get 4 to seven on the red in the second but I got on at 4 to 5.
In Europe, if you can identify every one of Mozartâs symphonies, people will say about you âThat person is cultured.â
Do the same thing in Australia and youâll be called a show off. (DEFINITELY TRUE).
BUT if you can name every horse and rider whoâs won the Melbourne Cup since 1861, you will be regarded with great respect. (True!)
Talking about race horses or dogs is never showing off.
You are admired as someone worthwhile.
Men and women who back in Budapest, Zurich or Vienna would have never dreamed of gambling 5 dinars of their hard earned money, and whose parents would have turned white at the thought of their children wasting their wages, in Australia soon shed all inhibitions and devote many waking hours to this new respectable way of life.
Itâs not as if theyâre gambling - theyâre simply trying to gain acceptance. Accountants, lawyers, doctors - all do it, including to be sociable and earn the respect of clients (who can often be found at the races anyway).
In other countries, âunenlightened parentsâ (the book says) are horrified if their children gamble. In Australia, parents of certain demographic/economic situation (usually the lower bracket) are keen to see their kids grow up respected members of the community, and encourage gambling from an early age.
âDonât waste your money, Mary! Better buy Tattslotto!â
âGrandpa reckons Concerto is set to winâ
âI bought everyone scratchies for Christmas but gave Dad a Quick-Pick (tattslotto)â
The book says itâs important therefore to train children from an early age to buy lotteries for birthdays, hold intra-family Melbourne cup sweeps (most people have these now, as well as at their workplace), watch lotto results gathered around the tv, and to put into practice the wise saying âthe family that bets together, gets togetherâ. (!!)
The part about the Scratchies is even more true these days! If you donât know what to buy for the person who seems to have everything...a lot of the time they end up with scratchies....
Not that long ago, I was in a Ballarat shopping centre close to an area called Wendouree West (inhabited by mostly âWestiesâ living in government supplied cheap housing when I noticed some people with scratchies at a table behind me in the restaurant area.
There were about 5 of them of all ages - a family I guess - rather poor looking, .. and between them all they had at least 50 scratchies, and were having a great time scratching them all, one after another, hoping to win a lot of money!
Same with Pokies - there is a âGamblers Anonymousâ programme, but the promotion of these machines is so much bigger....
Since Pokies were introduced to Victoria about 12 years ago, theyâve gone from being entertainment, to out of control for certain % of people. They started at 2c and 5c machines.....but these days theyâve added $1 machines too.
Before their legalisation here, to play them you used to have to take bus trips to the New South Wales border (a 5 hour trip at least) and people went as a social outing and spent 1-2 days going on trips to special clubs there where they played pokies.
Now they can do it everywhere and almost anywhere - pubs, bowling clubs, tabarets, RSLâs, football club rooms, etc. Ballarat alone has 700 Pokie machines for its 83,000 people population.
Australia does indeed have a gambling problem. Pure and simple. But many donât get help and a lot of it goes unnoticed because of many reasons. A lot of people who do it, donât believe they ARE gambling - for example, betting on horses isnât gambling, but can be seen as âpuntingâ and just having some fun. Lottery tickets...well, they donât cost that much to buy one every single week. Casinos are gambling, sure, but those playing in those and on the pokies can also see them just as âfunâ.
These statistics just released will give you an idea. They certainly shocked me into seeing that the problem we have is much huger than I already knew.
My city: Ballarat, population 83,000 people. Pokie machines - 674.
Gambling losses for 2002-2003: $47,436,036!!!!
Thatâs almost $130,000 a day....and it is known that some people are gambling on these machines at the rate of losing $1000 every hour!
The tv ads which warn about problem gambling and where to get help, and there are warnings posted at the Pokie venues on the machines.
In 1992 when the pokies first arrived in my city, $8 million dollars was lost through them. In 1993 it was $17 million dollars...and up and up it goes.
Also in my city just a few months ago, there was a very high profile court case of a bank teller being caught for embezzeling several million dollars of old peopleâs money from their bank account in order to support her pokie gambling habit. It is believed she lost all the money. Nobody, even her family, suspected what was going on until she got caught
There was an even bigger gambling embezzlement bust in Perth just last week, and nobody suspected this guy because it appeared he mainly gambled the big bets on the Internet, and just smaller ones at the races on a weekly basis.
So, the book is exactly correct. We ARE still a nation of gamblers. Not everybody gambles a lot, but many of those who do, spend everything they have on it.
Where does it all begin, this gambling streak? I think it begins when youâre very young. Then, youâve got no money, so it has to be for other things - at my school it was swap card competitions in the playground. Kids competed with each other to see who could win the most cards. A bit later you can gamble your pocket money. And on it must go...
Hey, Spring horse racing carnival isn't far away. And, 2nd Tuesday in November is the Melbourne Cup. You HAVE to bet on this one if you're an Aussie. Doesn't matter where in the world you are living either. It's just one of those 'must do's.
Kate