Avoidable tragedy
Following the accidental death of a 19-month-old child in Melbourne after being left unattended in a car for two hours in the summer heat, the establishment media have published pages of articles on the evils of gambling and questioning the "mothering" ability of the child's mother.
Accompanying an article headed "Grief flowers for a brief life", the February 24 Australian published a photo of two cards that were left with flowers in the Ferntree Gully Hotel car park, the site of the child's death. His mother had apparently gone to the hotel to play the poker machines. The cards read: "Suffer the little children" and "Now in the GOOD CARE of your heavenly mother".
The death of this child is tragic, and the boy's mother's actions were irresponsible. But the media's chastising of the woman, and their focus on stopping gambling miss the point.
While so many people survive on meagre incomes, gambling will be seen as a way out of financial misery, despite the very slim odds of winning, let alone breaking even. For many people, the temptation to risk already limited resources for a remote possibility of getting rich is irresistible.
Railing against the evils of gambling will not solve the problem, especially when governments are the biggest winners in an industry that thrives on the desperation of hundreds of thousands of people. More and more pokies are being installed in hotels and clubs, and there is even talk of poker machines in supermarkets.
Not everyone who gambles is addicted. However, parents who leave children unattended while they gamble do probably have a compulsion. Such people need assistance with their addiction.
The problem of children being left unattended while their parents gamble was surely foreseeable; research conducted by Melbourne University found that almost 45% of problem gamblers are parents.
An immediate short-term solution would be the provision of free, high-quality child-care services in all communities which are accessible to parents, especially women, not only during working hours, but also at times when parents may want to engage in recreational activities without their children present.
Gambling is a feature of capitalist society, a society which is based on a large proportion of people having less than what they need, let alone what they want. Outlawing gambling won't solve that problem. Rather, a livable income for all would eradicate financial desperation from people's lives.
By Margaret Allum