Regulate pub gambling machines — protect people, not profits

I know first-hand how quickly gambling can spiral out of control. 

Unlike a casino or bookmakers, where staff are trained to spot distress, where you can self-exclude, and where you cannot gamble while drunk — pub machines have none of those protections. 

Anyone, in any state, can feed money into a highly addictive machine with no intervention, no limit, and no way out. 

These machines sit in the corner of pubs specifically to catch people at their most vulnerable. That is not a loophole — it is a policy choice, and it is costing people their money, their mental health, and in some cases their lives. It has to change.