Poker machine card will prevent crime

A pre-commitment poker machine card system in Tasmania will help to prevent gambling-related crime, according to a person with lived experience of gambling addiction.

In 2016, Carolyn Crawford (pictured above) was sentenced to a jail term for stealing $400,000 from her employer over a seven-year period to fund a poker machine addiction.  She was 64-years-old, and before this had never received as much as a parking fine.

Carolyn is certain that if there had been a cashless card system in place, like the one that will be implemented in Tasmania next year, her experience would have been very different.

She says a pre-commitment card system would have had an immediate impact on her gambling behavior, with set limits on the amount of money she could lose each day, month and year. Carolyn says it would also have meant she could see how much she was spending on gambling.

I wouldn’t have bothered stealing if I wasn’t able to gamble. Every bit of the $400,000 I stole went on the pokies, in addition to my own wage. I had no idea I had stolen so much over such a long time period.

“I didn’t understand that what I was doing was an addiction until it was explained to me in prison by my Gamblers Help counsellor,” she explained.

“My family didn’t know about my gambling so I didn’t think they were being harmed by it. I saw the notices about gambling support when I was at a venue but I didn’t think they were relevant to me because I didn’t realise I had a problem – I was totally in denial.”

In Tasmania, poker machines are responsible for most of the gambling-related harms that affect our community. According to figures from the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission, Tasmanians lost $16.74 million to poker machines in July 2024 alone.

The State government has committed to the introduction of a universal player card gambling system from December 2025, a move that will deliver huge benefits to individuals, families and communities with minimal impact on people who gamble recreationally. In 2022 Anglicare’s What’s the real cost? report highlighted the ripple effect of gambling and the strong links between gambling, poor mental health and suicide. It revealed that some 57,000 Tasmanians are harmed each year by someone else’s gambling.

A second report released last year called The poker machine card Simple As outlined how the card-based system will assist people to take back control of their gambling.

Carolyn says three-quarters of the women at the prison facility were there because of gambling. “Most of the stories were the same; they were lonely, chasing losses, escaping family violence and then becoming addicted,” she said.

Prison saved my life because it stopped me and made me get the help that I needed, but locking people away isn’t how we should be treating addiction.

Carolyn says her overarching message is that with recovery comes hope.

There is life afterwards. You start to become the person you were meant to be. You realise that it’s not your fault – gambling is a predatory industry that has harmed your brain. I have nothing. I live on the pension in a private rental – but I have paid all the money back to the company so I have no debts. I am one of the lucky ones. My family and friends stuck by me through all this and didn’t judge me.  I still have their love, and if anything it has brought us closer.

 

Further information and support

Anglicare Tasmania’s Social Action and Research Centre (SARC) has published two reports about gambling harm in Tasmania: What’s the real cost? and The poker machine card. Simple As.

Anglicare runs the Gamblers Help service in Tasmania. It provides support to both people who gamble and their family and friends. Call us on 1800 243 232 for FREE, confidential and expert advice on how to take back control of your gambling.

SARC Coordinator Mary Bennett was interviewed by Bob Burton for this article that was published in the Tasmanian Inquirer and The Guardian.

Carolyn recommends watching the documentary Ka-Ching! “It shows exactly how the machines are made, even to the point of psychologists being hired to make sure they are addictive,” she said.