THERE was no mention of poker machines in the first accounts of Merrissa Sills’s theft of $134,868 from her former employer, Toronto RSL Club, in August 2008.
In Newcastle District Court one year later, when she pleaded guilty, Sills was described as a disgruntled former night manager seeking revenge on the club that sacked her.
It wasn’t until May last year, during a sentencing hearing, that the court first heard of the problem gambling behind the theft.
For Sills it was poker machines. For her brother Michael, a former police officer awaiting sentencing this month after pleading guilty to his part in the theft, it was mainly wagering.
Three months after finishing an 18-month jail sentence, and as the club and pub industries launched a $20million campaign based on ‘‘the right to have a flutter’’, Merrissa Sills this week talked about her 10 years as a problem gambler.
‘‘Because of it I lost my life,’’ she said, before apologising for ‘‘sounding dramatic’’.
But at 38 she is starting over after losing her job, her partner, friends, several hundred thousand dollars and her good reputation.
And in her new life ‘‘the right to have a flutter’’ is for others. She is one of 500,000 Australians classed as problem gamblers, or at risk of becoming problem gamblers.
‘‘Five dollars in a poker machine brought me to this,’’ she said, remembering the day she decided to ‘‘have a flutter’’ in the club where she worked, the $100 she won, and the rush she felt that she wanted to keep feeling.
After a life that had included physical, psychological and sexual abuse, the death of one parent while she was still a child and the drinking problems of another, the $100 win was not seen by Sills as just a random lucky event.
‘‘I’ve never thought much of myself. If something bad happens to me [it] doesn’t surprise me because that’s my life. If something good happens to me it’s amazing.’’
It was a poker machine but it came to represent a good thing in her life, despite the fact she had a job, friends and a fiance she was about to marry.
After that first win Sills played a few dollars the next day, and the next, and before a year had passed the few dollars had become a few hundred a week.
By the time Sills walked from Toronto RSL Club wearing a balaclava and with $134,868 stolen from a safe, knowing she would be arrested because she had been caught on the club’s closed circuit television cameras, she owed $20,000 linked to her own, and her brother’s, problem with gambling.
She had lost her job a year earlier, she feared for her brother over his gambling debts, and she came to see the robbery as her only option.
Sills’s account of an apparently normal life that runs out of control because of gambling is a familiar one to Hunter Council on Problem Gambling spokeswoman Judy Wiersma, who runs the Lake Macquarie Financial Counselling and Gambling Service.
‘‘I’ve had a couple of clients who have committed robberies,’’ she said.
‘‘A lot of ‘obtain money by deception’ charges in courts are problem gambling cases.’’
In a six-week period from May 8 to June 23 last year, Hunter Region courts heard the following cases along with that of Merrissa Sills. Former Hamilton Institute Social Club secretary Robert John Laming, 48, convicted of stealing $15,000 to feed his gambling addiction; Lyn Tisdale, 62, of Maryland, jailed for seven months for defrauding Centrelink of $35,000 to feed a long-term poker machine addiction; Amy Renee Bowden, 30, of Maryland, sentenced to 300 hours’ community service for defrauding Centrelink of $13,000 to fund a gambling problem; and Peter Lindsay, 61, of Pindimar, who did not lodge GST tax returns for five years, accumulating a debt of $130,000. He told the court he was gambling and was fined $20,000.
While clubs argue they provide funds for sport and community groups, Wiersma said the ‘‘price to the community of crime linked to problem gambling is something that’s not taken into account’’.
‘‘What we see at the extreme end is they either end up in jail or commit suicide,’’ she said.
Young men aged 18 to 25 are a particular concern in the Hunter Region.
Wiersma is extremely concerned about the extent of gambling advertising in Australia, and pervasion of the myth that Australians are a nation of gamblers.
‘‘It gobsmacks me when I see the amount of gambling advertising in television coverage of football games that are seen by children,’’ she said.
‘‘They’re trying to make out betting is a normal part of life so that children grow up thinking everyone bets. We’re led to believe we’re a nation of gamblers but we’re not. It’s important for people to know that.’’
An Australian Productivity Commission report on gambling released last year found up to 75per cent of Australians did not play poker machines.
It found the risk of problem gambling was low for people who only play lotteries and scratchies, but ‘‘rises steeply with the frequency of gambling on table games, wagering and, especially, gaming machines’’.
The commission found that of the $10.5billion spent each year on poker machines alone, up to 75per cent came from about 500,000 problem gamblers, or people at risk of becoming problem gamblers.
It concluded that ‘‘a more coherent and effective policy approach is needed, with targeted policies that can effectively address the high rate of problems experienced by those playing gaming machines regularly’’.
In its submission to the Productivity Commission gambling inquiry, the Hunter Council on Problem Gambling wrote that contact with the local gambling industry ‘‘suggested there is an attitude amongst some in the industry that gambling treatment services are a threat to their business and revenue’’.
‘‘This leads us to wonder if the responsibility, awareness and commitment for responsible gambling practices is truly being communicated, supported and displayed by all staff within gambling venues,’’ the council wrote.
HEXHAM Bowling Club secretary-manager Jon Chin is state counsellor of ClubsNSW for the Hunter Region.
He acknowledged problem gambling as ‘‘one of the social ills of our society’’, agreed there were probably too many clubs in the Hunter, and said technology allowing gamblers to limit the amount of money they spend, as proposed by Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie, would cripple many clubs.
The estimated bill for his club, with about half its 87 machines needing to be replaced if the poker machine legislation goes ahead, is $1.2million, he said.
The figure is based on $5000 to refit some machines and between $25,000 and $30,000 to replace half the machines.
The club’s staff have undertaken the responsible conduct of gambling course (RCG) and the industry’s ClubSafe course, which includes information on possible stress signs shown by problem gamblers. The length of time a person sits in front of a machine is not seen as an indication of problem gambling.
But Chin said staff would not intervene if they thought a person had a gambling problem because ‘‘until such time as they say ‘I’ve got a problem’, we can’t do anything. My staff don’t ask them how much they put in or how much they’ve lost. People get offended,’’ he said.
The last time the club received a self-exclusion notice from a person who identified as a problem gambler was in January, referred by a gambling counselling service.
Chin conceded there would be problem gamblers at his club among its 4000 members, and did not dispute a Productivity Commission finding that only 8 to 17per cent of problem gamblers seek help, and ‘‘most have either hit rock bottom or are coming close’’.
He said he would be concerned to know that his club was profiting from a member’s problem gambling, but his capacity to help was limited ‘‘until they put up their hand’’.
‘‘I really don’t know what else we can do,’’ he said.
Monthly poker machine turnover at Hexham Bowling Club is $2million, and Chin is budgeting for a net poker machine profit of $1.5million for this year, or about 65per cent of total profits.
The club contributes about $30,000 a year through the mandated community development and support expenditure scheme, in which clubs making more than $1million from poker machines are required to return 1.5per cent of any money above that figure to the community.
It is one of 12 clubs in the Newcastle local government area required to contribute to the scheme.
Chin agreed with Judy Wiersma that gambling advertising during sports events seen by children was a major concern.
‘‘There’s too much gambling, too much advertising,’’ he said.
In its submission to the Productivity Commission, Hunter Council on Problem Gambling asked the commission to consider whether the design of poker machines increased the likelihood of problem gambling.
Machines that flash messages including ‘‘This must be your lucky day’’ and ‘‘You’re a ‘reel’ winner’’, or that offer free spins and other incentives, can leave players feeling they’re in competition with the machines and can’t leave until they’ve ‘‘won’’, the Hunter Council submission said.
Merrissa Sills remembers the times in front of the machines, when she played ‘‘high’’ – spent a lot of money – because ‘‘if you’re a chronic gambler you believe that the bigger you play, the bigger you win’’.
She supports Andrew Wilkie’s pre-commitment technology on machines.
‘‘No gambler wants to do hundreds of thousands of dollars. They go with the intention of doing $20 or $50, and at the end of the day they go out having lost everything, and that’s probably 90per cent of the time or more,’’ she said.
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