Good ideas - but you are right the state governments are too dependent on the money to actually do something about it. I would also like to see:

5. Machines should be limited in the amount that can be wagered per "game". eg. maximum of a few dollars per game

6. Machines that accept notes should be banned - if people have to get up to go to a cashier to change their $100 grocery money to coins they are less likely to do it (and the club/pub has better chance of detecting problem gamblers).

7. Even better would be to make all machines accept tokens rather than money.

8. Each pub/club/casino should be required to display how much PROFIT the venue has made from poker machines in the last week/month/year.

It was interesting last year (or was it the year before) when the Coward government was trying to ban online gambling they were very big on stopping problem gamblers but when an interviewer pointed out that the majority of problem gamblers are using poker machines there was "nothing that could be done - poker machines are a state issue"

[ This Message was edited by: becareful on 2002-05-27 10:22 ]