We, the undersigned, represent a portion of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia who detest the effects of poker machines on our society and who want to be rid of them by having their use banned at both a State and Federal level. These machines represent nothing more than a stealthily engineered super-tax, an instigated scourge that directly and mercilessly deliberately targets the poor and the emotionally vulnerable. The target demographic of potential and active 'poker machine addict' victims encompasses a much wider social field than these groups alone, of course.
The practise of 'going to the pokies' adds nothing of any value, benefit or merit to our society. The only valuable side effect of these machines is that they represent a cause that has rallied people within our society who are in possession of sound ethics and good moral consciences to rise against those who advocate the benefits of poker machines and who defend their worthiness as a benign 'harmless pass time leisure activity' as if the destructive habit of poker machine gambling is somehow a 'culturally significant' beneficial addition to the range of endeavours indicative of the collective Australian national psyche.
The presence of poker machines in Australia is indisputably the direct cause of a loss of productivity, business collapse, dishonesty, thefts, embezzlement, incarceration, murders, suicides, depression, insanity, domestic violence, malnutrition, bankruptcy, prostitution, drug trafficking, sexual slavery, child abuse and neglect, disease and numerous other ills all too numerous to mention in this brief note.
Rather than trifling with thoroughly inadequate measures like introducing 'mandatory precommitment', the signatories of this petition request that these dastardly devices are absolutely, utterly and completely and permanently removed from legal operation in our nation at both a state and federal level.
The only rational solution to ending the national epidemic of wholesale abuse of the citizenry that these machines have been allowed to engage us in is by immediately and irrevocably terminating their status as legal.
Please invite anyone you suspect also opposes the legality of poker machines to please sign this petition in order to have them banned at both a Federal and State level. Thank you.
