When Gambling Addict Becomes Industry Shill

Sad commentary!

my response to david schwarz

Former AFL player, radio personality and high-profile problem gambler David Schwarz has recorded a video, where he speaks in graphic detail about his gambling years and why he believes mandatory pre-commitment for poker machines won’t work. I’ve just watched the video… my apologies, David, but in all the years I’ve listened to you on SEN, that is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard you come up with.


David, I’ve heard you speak of your gambling problems before. I’ve attended conferences and presentations where you spoke clearly about your love of gambling and the destruction it caused you, the pain it caused to those you love. I’ve even spoken to you in person briefly about it, although you probably don’t remember.

I don’t deny your past or reject your experiences. They were brutal and you have my utmost respect for surviving those years, and for having the courage to speak openly about it now.

But David, there is a singular difference between you and I. You were addicted to gambling; you were never addicted to poker machines.

In your video, David, you talk about your desperation for the punt. You mention poker machines a couple of times but your burning desire was the horses, and the table games at the casino. The pokies were a bit of fun when you couldn’t gamble somewhere else.

You were not a poker machine addict. You were not one of the hundreds of thousands of people who only ever gamble on the pokies. You did not have the love/hate relationship with poker machines that gambling counsellors across the country hear about every day.

David, mandatory pre-commitment wouldn’t have helped you. I agree with you on that point. But you were a problem gambler, not a poker machine addict. You were desperate to gamble on anything; your story of gambling on cockfights in Thailand is testament to that.

But David, mandatory pre-commitment and the rest of the reforms being proposed are aimed at poker machine addicts. Pre-commitment is not for horse racing or table games, or even cockfights for that matter. These reforms are about poker machines and poker machine addiction.

You told, in your video, how you would wake up each morning desperate to get out the door and start punting. How you would head straight for the paper and check the form guide. You said that for problem gamblers, “moments of clarity” don’t exist. Well, David, I would wake up each morning and swear I would never play another poker machine again. I would wake up loathing my life and what I was doing.

How’s that for a moment of clarity, David?

The saddest, most disappointing thing about your video message, David, is this:

You are employed as a responsible gambling ambassador by ALH, the Woolworths organisation that runs more poker machines than any other entity in this country.

Your video was uploaded to YouTube by the official Clubs NSW YouTube account, and was spruiked nationally in a Clubs Australia media release.

Your message has been compromised by those who are paying your way, and you have been compromised in the same way. The alternatives you list come straight from the Clubs Australia handbook.

And if your message is heeded, then thousands upon thousands of poker machine addicts, their families and friends, will be denied the opportunity to access tools that can help them break their addiction. And thousands upon thousands more, in the years to come, will continue to become addicted when this could have been prevented.

David, I respect where you’ve been, and I respect what you’ve done since then. But sadly, that respect stops here.