The following letter was written by Socialist Party member Andrew Calleja and published in the Whittlesea Weekly newspaper on May 16, 2006.
Recommendations made to the State Government Gambling Licence
Review by the Whittlesea Council [Whittlesea Weekly May 9] are band-aid
solutions that don’t reflect community feeling on poker machines.

It seems that players aren’t the only ones getting addicted to the
pokies, with the State Government putting its 24% take ahead of
social well-being.

If the machines are to stay beyond 2012, then they need to be
operated by the State Government,ensuring that 100% of revenue is put
back into the community and that the private profit motive is taken out
of the product.

The capping of machines at current levels is simply not good
enough. Instead of spending rate-payers money on wining and dining the
likes of Bruce Mathesion, the City of Whittlesea would be advised to
address the dangerously low levels of Civil Society particpation and
work towards an environment where people of the outer north are
afforded the same social opportunities of those living in Brighton,
Malvern, North Fitzroy etc.