Doug PollardAlcohol, Gambling, Depression & Hypocrisy
July 30th 2008 06:30
Well that took care of the rent money, better get to the teller machine....
Sorry to go on about Jeff Kennett, but . . . . . . . . . . .
Not content with putting his foot in it over gay football trainers, (see previous posts) the chairman of beyondblue, the anti-depression organization, is now hip deep in building a large bar and gaming venue in the ‘new’ Melbourne suburb of Caroline Springs.
The football club of which he is president, the Hawks, are building a large drinking establishment. The club has been granted a licence to install 80 poker machines – what used to be more appropriately called ‘one-armed bandits’. That’s the largest new gaming licence in Victoria for seven years. The machines are expected to net the club a profit of $1m annually.
The Hawks gin-palace will be the only one in this relatively low-rent western suburb. The club itself draws most of its support from Hawthorn, one of Melbourne’s most affluent eastern suburbs.
There is a poorly understood connection between depression and problem gambling: researchers aren’t sure if the gambling is a cause of depression, or a symptom. It’s probably both.
What is known is that the bulk of the profit from poker machines comes from gambling addicts, aka ‘problem gamblers.’
So the question is, what is the chairman of a charity devoted to fighting depression doing running a club designed to rip $1m a year from problem gamblers in a relatively poor western suburb to subside a footy team which is the plaything of rich businessmen from the east? Does anyone else see a contradiction here?
Mr Jeffrey ‘Saruman’ Kennett cannot simultaneously play the compassionate carer and the cynical exploiter. Either he can chair the major national organization helping people overcome depression related to, for example, their sexual orientation or their gambling problems, or he can play the boofhead footy president making public statements exposing his ingrained homophobia while screwing money out of problem gamblers. But not both.
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