Here’s an example of what Kevin Rudd could call “extreme capitalism”.
On Friday night, the Victorian Government has commendably released the pokies losses figures for all venues over the past three years.
We know that Woolworths is the 22nd biggest retailer in the world and has mastered the art of cornering key segments of the Australian market, whether it be groceries, grog, petrol, fresh fruit, tobacco or pokies.
But who would ever have thought it would be so efficient at exploiting Victorian pokies addicts in working class suburbs? The figures revealed the 20 most lucrative Victorian pokies venues ripped $926 million out of pokies players in the three years to 30 June, 2008, and Woolworths snaffled a staggering $736 million or 79.5%.
Last October, Crikey asked how Woolworths manages to avoid media mentions when it comes to the damage caused by its vast Australian pokies empire.
The Saturday papers were another classic example. The Age produced this page one story focusing on the $60 million lost at the Skyways Taverner hotel, Victoria’s most lucrative.
Surely the owner of such a venue is a relevant fact? By failing to name Woolworths, Fairfax simply reinforces the impression it is protecting its largest advertiser and also covering for its prominent director Roger Corbett, the former Woolies CEO who drove the aggressive push into pokies.
Whilst the Herald Sun did manage to inject the word Woolworths once into its Saturday story, the paper predictably focused most of the attention on billionaire pokies mogul Bruce Mathieson, who is the minority 25% partner in the Woolies joint venture.
This pandering to a major advertiser doesn’t just happen with Rupert Murdoch’s biggest selling Australian paper.
The City of Manningham has arguably the heaviest concentration of Woolworths pokies venues in the state and featured twice in the top ten losers list through The Shoppingtown Hotel and The Doncaster Inn.
When a Woolworths supermarket manager turned up to speak at our Australian Day function courtesy of the company’s $100,000 sponsorship of celebrations across the state, two councillors complained about it at the next council meeting.
I got up and said it was hypocritical of the manager to talk about all the good Woolies does in our community when the company controls a majority of the pokies in our community.
The Manningham Leader, our local weekly Murdoch giveaway, chose not to report any of this, but the next edition featured a colour advertisement for The Shoppingtown Hotel all over the back page.
The most recent edition of The Manningham Leader features another full page ad for Woolworths calling for community groups to apply for $5000 grants that will “help primary school aged children lead healthier more active grants”.
Given that Australians are the world’s biggest gambling losers in per capita terms, it really is time Woolies was forced to defend its position. How can it keep spouting all this talk about community benefit, whilst brutally operating the world’s most lethal poker machines?
*The author is on Manningham Council which is currently reviewing its pokies policy.
Anything is ok as long as the State is receiving its cut so don’t expect Victoria to do anything about this unless the people get out in the streets. Now if you replace “Woolworths” with “Wall Street” you get to understand what happens when sociopathic corporations are allowed, in the name of shareholder returns, to keep pushing the envelope to an ultimate denouement. They can rely on their kept media who are totally beholden to their major advertisers to stay “mum” as well as the political class who daren’t insult their primary benefactors.
Which, brings us to where the world is at the present time; with bankers receiving “get out of gaol free cards” plus compensation to start again somewhere else courtesy of that perennial bunny, the taxpayer; who is also being asked to stump up for every boondoggle the mind is capable of conceiving. Small business and the middle class will be decimated while Big Govt gets even bigger as people plead for the State to save them from their imminent plastic and other derivative petroleum deficiency. The Corporatocracy then climbs into bed with Leviathan to spawn some new toxic progeny inevitably unleashed on a gullible and naive many and, there begins the next round of the plunder of the masses.
Even before the mining boom, Western Australia managed to get by without pokies (and Sunday trading) and still does. What is their secret?
At least The Age and The Herald Sun have given the story some prominence, even if they’ve skirted the issue of the Woolworths involvement. Have the ABC or other media, eg Sky News, run the story? I can’t find anything on the ABC or Sky News websites (though the ABC News gambling tag http://www.abc.net.au/news/tag/gambling/ has links to other stories).
The article in the Herald Sun has pretty poor maths
“Fifth-ranked Matthew Flinders in Chadstone was perhaps the most staggering – an average $901,827 lost on each machine, or $822 every day.”
The correct figure is an even more staggering $2470 per day
Doesn’t the state government set the number of pokies in the state, surely they should be the recipients of your ire. Why not also attack Woolies for selling cigarettes, and other harmful products. Personally I can think of nothing more boring than feeding hard earned cash into a machine.