These machines are a pestilence but we are stuck with them. Remember before Victorian pokies? Lygon Street was an organised criminal gambling den. We can only keep taxing them and if we dump them then criminals will again thrive.
What about we just let people gamble? Take drugs, drink alcohol? Take the criminal element away but ensure that users cannot drive or breed. I think the problem would then literally die out.

It appears to me Toni Lavis, from your post of how well they are doing financially, that the club you no longer frequent have done exactly what they wanted to do. By providing what the majority of their clientele want, they have a healthy business.

Personally I have no use for clubs, pubs or gambling. One motoring club I belong to has a lunch get together 3 or 4 times a year at an RSL or a pub, but that is it for me.

I have even given up the clubs monthly social drive to somewhere of interest. I got too sick of the huge numbers of learner drivers out on the weekends these days. I sympathise with families trying to give their kids the required 50 hours, or whatever it is today, before they can apply for their licence, but I'd prefer not to share our narrow country roads with them. With current fuel prices, it must be an expensive exercise for them.

One advantage of being an old fart, I can take my Sunday drives mid week, when most of the learners are at school.

Well I used to play them, but it became very very expensive and I had a loosing streak. However, the only way one can play a poker machine in a club, is be a member or temporary member, and one can put ones membership card in the machine, and one earns extra points to spend in the club. This is not the case with hotels who have usually less machines, and the payouts are generally not as frequent as they don't have the turnover a club has.

They also pay a tax to the government on their revenue, and like alcohol and cigarettes, the government makes a mint.

Without poker machines most of the licensed clubs could not exist. They give patrons cheaper meals, and drinks. Pay for promotions, and free raffles twice a week. Have bingo and also entertainment venues. Generally the clientele is conservative or are lawn bowlers.

I know in Armidale we have two larger clubs and a golf club with poker machines. Most hotels have them, and if Tasmania wants to get rid of them, that will be a shame for clubs and hotels.

I heard of the Woolworths scam, but I can't understand how it can be achieved. In a club, usually they keep an eye on punters, and one is usually reminded to take a break, etc. Or get the gambling site and reminder winning a jackpot is 1 million to one, etc. They can monitor the individual machines. I've seen people but hundreds in a machine, bet big and walk out with thousands. Pay $5.00 a go is not for me. But I have never been urged to play the machines by any staff, my problem is I'd win and then put the winnings back in different machines. But I got out with people. Now I don't go out but I buy lottery tickets on line. And if one is a gambler, they will find ways to gamble be it horses, dogs, kenoland, or poker on line.