My first bet was with an illegal SP (Starting Price) bookmaker behind the Junction Hotel in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. It was in the late 1950s. My father cleared me with the look-out ‘cocky’ and I mingled with the blokes milling around the penciller.
Most of the pubs in the district had SP bookies. Many of them were Catholics. The cards, the dice and the racecourse were part of Irish cultural baggage. Just as well, for the enterprise of Catholic parishes and schools was funded in no small part by gambling. A ‘silver circle’, the spinning wheel and raffles at fetes, and sportsmen’s nights with diverse gaming tables were standard features of parish life through much of the 20th century. Neither clergy nor laity publicly pondered the morality of this form of fund-raising. Strict Protestants viewed all forms of gambling as a vice; we called them ‘wowsers’.
The SP bookies and their patrons in the 1950s lived in the same locality. The only technology involved was a radio to hear the races and the starting prices. The punters knew that a bit of chicanery around the tracks forever tilted the odds but they backed their smarts and an occasional allegedly insider ‘tip’ anyhow. Doubtless some punters’ losses caused problems for themselves and their families. It was blokey recreation, easily over-romanticised, but limited in time and scope, moderated by communal norms and of minimal social harm.
For governments and racing clubs, the problem with gambling was financial, not moral. They could not derive revenue from unregulated SP betting. The solution was to rationalise gambling by appropriating off-course betting exclusively for Totalisator Agency Board (TAB) shops.
So, around the mid-20th century began a progressive corporatisation and technological transformation of gambling in Australia. Enabled by the information technology revolution and driven by multi-national, mass-marketing bookmaking corporations, off-course punting has burgeoned into legalised, unlimited on-line wagering on any sport or activity with chance outcomes, anytime and anywhere in the world.
New South Wales led the other States in introducing mechanical ‘non-sport’ gambling in the 1950s. Popular resistance to so-called ‘poker machines’ in pubs, clubs and later-approved casinos, was eventually overcome in other States, except Western Australia. Straitened State budgets, promises of effective regulation and undertakings that portion of the government take would be directed to community good causes cleared the way.
"The Economist reported in 2014 that Australia leads the world in gambling expenditure per capita."
Now Australian States have mature