By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
A PROBLEM gambler who has squandered more than $100,000 on poker machines in Doveton and Dandenong has been helped back on the rails by his well-meaning employer.
Terry Power, of Doveton, who describes himself as a “recovering gambling addict”, had owed about $20,000 on four maxed-out credit cards before his workmates intervened.
Nick Martinelli, financial controller at Mr Power’s workplace CW Marketing in Rowville, helped organise a loan consolidating the debts and setting out a budget to pay them back.
He personally drove Mr Power to a first meeting with a gambling counsellor.
“I said to him ‘Do you want to stop this or not?’” Mr Martinelli said.
“Because if you do, we’ll support you all the way.”
Last year, a grateful Mr Power cleared the debt – with the help of a long-service and annual leave payout from his boss – and has since steadily built savings.
Mr Power has come a long way from regularly blowing $1000 a week, usually in one pokies session. His sessions have stretched from 9am to 3am the next morning, he says, adding; “They fed you party pies and sausage rolls so you don’t even have to move from your chair.”
As a measure to help protect problem gamblers, the state government banned ATMs from gaming venues. However, Mr Power could within minutes withdraw more cash from that hotel’s TAB or an ATM across the road.
He estimates his pokie losses at somewhere between $125,000 and $250,000.
Included in that was a $72,000 superannuation and redundancy package in the early 1990s, which fatefully coincided with the widespread introduction of pokies in Victoria.
He got hooked from the moment he won a $100 jackpot. After that point, he obsessed with trying to win back his losses. All that time, no staff member at a gambling venue told him to stop.
Mr Power has described his state with poetry. An extract reads;
“To gamble, not to gamble, that goes through my head
I even hear the music while lying in my bed”.
“All I was thinking of was my next hit… I might get lucky,” he told the News.
“Then all the way home you’re banging your head against a brick wall. You’re so annoyed with yourself.
“You come home and start vacuuming the carpets or dusting. It’s more or less a penance.”
He says with regret, “I could have gone around-the-world three or four times.”
As the counsellor warned him, there would be self-confessed “slip-ups”, such as a $700 splurge on the machines last Christmas Eve. Easy to do when you’re playing 10-lines $5 spins – in other words $50 stakes for each push of the button. It used to be worse when there were $10 maximum spins – up to $100 a hit.
Mr Power concurred with calls by Monash University public health researcher Charles Livingston for $1 maximum spins. At the moment punters can chew through $600 dollars an hour, Dr Livingston estimates.
Mr Martinelli, who checks on Mr Power’s financials monthly, said his colleague had always kept up with his new savings regimen.
He’s seen Mr Power shed the stress of his indebtedness.
“He’s now got money in the bank.” said Mr Martinelli.
For assistance, call Gambler’s Help Line on 1800 858 858.
