Won’t somebody think of the pokies?

It’s like clockwork. A government wants to restrict access to pokies and the opposition isn’t far behind. Once again, everybody is trying to destroy one of the most innocent joys on earth. But there’s a crucial voice being ignored in this debate: us, the pokies.

I’m a poker machine and I’m sick of my fate being debated by people in suits who have no idea the important place we have in our communities: to give punters something to spend vast quantities of money on as they enjoy their god-given right to a watery schooner and a parma so suspiciously discounted that even the chicken it’s made from knows there’s a con going on somewhere.

Just because those communities happen to be in various states of mild to vicious poverty for reasons nobody can identify, I suppose you think that’s a reason to drag the pokies out of the RSL, pile them up in front of the big antique cannon and set it off? Newsflash: those cannons don’t work any more, so why don’t you come in for one or two thousand spins?

We’re here for fun! Look at my big chunky buttons, hear my elegant and addiction-inducing revel! Don’t know what everything means on the screen? Nobody does, and that’s sort of the point! Keep hitting that spin! Theoretically you can even win money from me, and by the time you realise how incredibly damaging I am, you’ll be having too much fun to care! Wheeee!

Do I have to remind you that pokies are games? Meanwhile, your leaders would never think of restricting access to something like Scrabble, which nobody likes and is well known to be rigged in favour of people who know words. And when has a game ever been harmful, other than maybe lawn darts or that one where teenagers king-hit strangers on the street? Where’s legislation to ban those? Don’t answer that.

When an anti-pokies crusader tries to force their agenda down your throat, what they really want is to deprive people of the most basic delights: light and music. What’s next? Gouging out your eyes with a big government ice cream scoop? Filling your ear holes with nasty rough concrete next? Yes!

And you’re telling me they want to do that all because I’m fine-tuned to entrap and destroy the livelihoods of huge numbers of society’s most vulnerable members at a frequency and scale difficult to fathom? Truly, the kind of thing that’d make any benevolent God pull the plug on the whole earth lab experiment — if the continued existence of my kind didn’t suggest fairly compellingly that such a God must surely be long dead, if he ever even existed at all?

Well, it sounds like someone just doesn’t like having fun.

Look, I’ll admit we can do better. Sure, our seats are sometimes wonky and you can only smoke while playing a small percentage of us (we’ll get that number up, fingers crossed). And, yes, we may or may not contribute to a few thousand families being drained of their life savings, thanks to unethical mechanics in a predatory environment conspicuously designed to rid you of your cash by exploiting the hole left by the long-felt disintegration of community.

But we are so much more than that: we also have those weird and often problematically themed games! Why not spend an hour panning for gold in the Wild West, swivel on your chair to visit “the Orient” (seriously) before hopping over to the gilded avenues of, uh… ancient Mesopotamia? Sure, why not. Watch out everybody, Gilgamesh here is on a hot streak, no time for the meat raffle!

This is what they want to take from you. A chance for fortune and escape, a chance for a punter — probably sunburnt and waiting up to four hours to play (thanks to government-mandated closing hours, I’ll remind you) — to enjoy the ancient Levant.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some pensioners to make destitute for the benefit of Woolworths shareholders. Ding ding ding ding ding!