Australia Has 18% of All Slot Machines in the World

It’s no wonder than Australia is currently in the middle of a slot machine epidemic as the country currently has an incredible 76% share of all machines in the world located outside of casinos. In total, Australia has around 183,000 slots, or pokies as they are called Down Under, in its numerous pubs and clubs across the country, with the actual worldwide tally of slots both inside and outside of casinos coming to just under 1.1 million machines.
The startling news was reveled recently by The Australia Institute, a progressive think tank based in Canberra, with the report’s co-author, Bill Browne, explaining:
“In terms of machines per person, Australia is right up there with casino-states like Monaco, Macau and Caribbean Island nations.. Other gambling games can also be risky, but poker machines are high-intensity, putting people at risk of losing hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour.”
The Australian island state of Tasmania with a population of just half a million people is not immune to the epidemic, either, and according to Leanne Minshull, Director of The Australia Institute Tasmania,”has more pokies than India, Italy and the Netherlands combined.”
While the situation has regularly featured in the news as concerned groups voice their opposition to the proliferation of slots, the opposition Labor Party said that it would clamp down on their numbers outside of casinos if elected to government in 2019. Tasmania is one of the states that is likely to be targeted first, too, with Opposition Leader Rebecca White stating that islanders spent $110 million on slots at pubs and clubs last financial year, which could have been “better spent in our communities supporting small business and families.”
According to the report, allowing so many slots to be located around the country of just 25 million people has turned Australia into a “global anomaly”. Elaborating further, Browne commented:
“Australia’s large number of poker machines and our unusual decision to allow them in pubs and clubs make us a global anomaly. Australia has 0.3% of the world’s population but 6% of its conventional gaming machines and 18% of its poker machines.”