Queensland Online Pokie Spending Concerns

According to the news in Queensland Australia people in that part of the world spent $478 million dollars on the 'pokies' in the last three months. The latest figures from the State's Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation show nearly 44,000 poker machines in Queensland clubs and hotels have had $1.36 billion put in them this year. The Productivity Commission's draft report on the social and economic impacts of gambling in Australia were surprised that Australians in Queensland had gambled so much. The report, to be released in Canberra, is expected to focus on problem gambling.
When the commission last examined the issue in 1999, it found that 2.1 per cent of adults or more than 290,000 people had a gambling problem.
But in one of more than 260 submissions to the current inquiry, the clubs industry argued problem gambling involving poker machines had decreased, citing declining demand for counselling services.

The earliest mechanical gambling machines, going back to the 1890s and early 1900s, featured pictures of playing cards, and hence became known as "poker machines." Australians went off to the pub to play the pokies in huge numbers until the mid-1990s, when the online casino was invented. Now, instead of going down to the pub or the casino to play the pokies, the punter can stay at home and let the pokies come to them. It's a lot more comfortable and a lot more convenient to play the pokies online, and besides, the online casinos could offer a much greater variety of Aussie pokies than could possibly fit into any pub or land-based casino. Clubs Australia said, the much bigger problem was online gambling. Pokies researcher Charlotte Fabiansson called for electronic controls on pokies, forcing players to take a break every two hours.  Restricting the time players were allowed on land based real slot machines seems to help people realize their limits. This is not applicable to online gambling activities though. The calculations for online gambling on the 'pokies' in Australia was not part of the research.