Adelaide Casino taking responsibility for preventing problem gambling

The new New Zealand owners of the Adelaide Casino, the Sky City Group show that our trans-tasman counterparts do things a little differently - they actually want to prevent problem gambling by intervening before it happens.

Today's Adelaide Advertiser (Article here on News.Com.Au or a pdf here) reports that Sky City Adelaide will have dedicated 'host responsibility coordinators' with the objective of preventing harmful behaviours by establishing relationships with patrons and acting when they recognise signs of problem gambling.

This early intervention approach has been applauded by anti-gambling groups in South Australia, and counselling services in the State are supporting the Casino through the training of the specialist staff.

This is a great initiative and shows that casinos can be proactive about preventing problem gambling without harming their bottom line. We can only hope that this new attitude to problem gambling spreads to the other casinos - however considering that Australian gambling now has a clear Victorian dominance with Crown and Tabcorp owning the other major east coast casinos with Star City and Jupiters it unfortunately isn't likely (given the current practices here) although I would like to be proved wrong.

If this program is successful, then hopefully the excuses that some industry operators present will be futile and they will have to accept change to more responsible practices. I just hope that the change will occur sooner rather than later.

GG