ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Politicians and policymakers (especially in NSW) are on notice today after one of the nation’s peak poker machine lobby groups announced that their private army of well-paid mercenaries is ready to defend the rights of their members to launder the proceeds of organised crime with deadly force.
As pressure mounts on politicians to do something about the scourge of poker machines, pressure also mounts on pubs and clubs in one part of the country to keep the good times rolling.
Under the plan drafted by one particular poker machine lobby group, one eight-man section with two separate bricks, will be placed at each venue that has over 50 poker machines.
They have been authorised to use deadly force by the lobby group (which cannot be named due to them threatening to send a section to Betoota to shoot our editorial team in the head and chop our hands off) and will also act as protection for high rollers.
A representative of the lobby group spoke to The Advocate this morning via wireless telephone and stated for the record that they are ‘deadly’ serious about making sure clubs and pubs can continue to exploit the working class while also providing a boutique money laundering service for organised crime.
“Of course, we know that 10% of all cash that goes into a poker machine in our state is the proceeds of crime,” they said.
“I’ll tell you how it’s done. A mid-level drug dealer comes into a pub with a couple grand in cash. They feed it into a machine and play for a little while. Maybe they get up, maybe they don’t. Either way, they take the cash out when it’s roughly the same as what they put in and Abra Kadabra you have some clean cash,”
“Then there’s the people who’re addicted to them. It’s the right of every Australian to put their house, car and marriage through a poker machine and throw themselves under the 7:40 service to Town Hall – and we will defend the right to the death,”
“So if these policymakers and politicians try to take that away, they can take it by force. We will be waiting.”
The Advocate reached out to local publican Mark Donald, who’s been running The Cottaging Broadcaster Hotel for over a decade.
His pub has never had pokies because it’s a small pub in regional Queensland. When asked how he’s able to stay afloat without the pokies, Mark said it was easy.
“You need to make your pub a nice place to be, like better than the ones around it. So having things like nice food and cold piss – but like having piss that old blokes like and also having piss that some green-haired yuppie fuckwit likes. It’s a simple formula. Having some live music that isn’t just some prick with a guitar doing Ed Sheeran covers. It’s not hard,” he said.
“If you can’t survive without pokies then you’re probably in the wrong job.”
More to come.
