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June 29, 2026 — 5:00am
The state budget handed down last week could be called many things. Restrained, responsible and a tad mundane for a pre-election spending blueprint despite shelling out for some rego relief, an Opal fare freeze and Treasurer Daniel Mookhey squirrelling away a spare $1.1 billion for unexpected expenses.
But the budget certainly could not be called anti-gambling or anti-pokies. As state political reporter Max Maddison discovered, an increase in revenue from the tax on gambling machines and the addictions that fuel them is helping prop up the budget as it eyes an eventual return to surplus.
Revenue from pokies in hotels – home to about one-quarter of the state’s gaming machines – is tipped to grow in the next four years, rising from $1.63 billion to $2.2 billion by 2029-30. By that time, should everything in Mookhey’s plans go right, the projected budget surplus for that year is $1.9 billion. Much can happen in that time but even so, the numbers line up almost too neatly – if pokies and the taxes from them did not exist, neither would the promised surplus.
The numbers tell us one thing, but the human cost is far harder to quantify. As much as the pokies suck up money and can be used to launder dirty cash, they steal time and attention and they can lead to crushing and heartbreaking outcomes for addicts and their families.
The Herald today reports the example of one such Sydney man who in the depths of his desperation in mid-2024 typed an email to the prime minister expressing his shame at falling into the gambling trap and how saddened he was the government and community had enabled this to happen.
His cry for help, as Harriet Alexander and Bevan Shields report, was forwarded to the NSW premier and then at least 11 bureaucrats who spent more than three months crafting a response. The buck-passing and hand-wringing, exposed under a call for papers by NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann, exemplify a preoccupation with appearing to act rather than delivering meaningful change.
Resistance to reform can be seen elsewhere; it is more than 18 months since an independent panel presented the Minns government a 30-point road map to reduce gambling harm and money laundering. The government has since brought in numerous anti-gambling measures, but the number of poker machines has increased, quarterly losses are up year-on-year, and the government is clearly banking on the tax windfall increasing.
The Herald has long campaigned for meaningful gambling reform and has described the poker machine industry as the running sore of NSW that refuses to heal itself or be brought to heel. The state has Australia’s highest number of poker machines, and they remain a blight. The government cannot seem to wean itself off the income either.
The question must be asked: what good is a surplus if it is built on despair?
Jordan Baker sends a newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive her Note from the Editor.
