A farewell to one-armed bandits.

They obviously got started on the St Pat’s Day drinking early at the Australian Bolshevik Collective. They’d never post such a good news story if they were sober.

The new owner of a pub in Queensland has come to a parting of the ways with poker machines.

It was deterring from our ability to make this a more family friendly venue… Pokies can be quite antisocial so from a value standpoint, we decided that they weren’t in line with where we wanted to take things.

Jessica Huddart, bandit banisher.

I’ve never spent a lot of time in pubs, and I’ve spent very little of that in pubs where poker machines were considered a feature. While I haven’t seen any family members pour their savings down the slot I share Ms Huddart’s general dislike of the things.

When they were legalised in Victoria in the 1980s the scene closely resembled that of the last three years. With few exceptions pub owners got pokied up. A clean safe source of income! How could you be against that? Then came the disillusionment and the adverse effects – most of which befell the patrons, naturally.

All in all, poker machines are one of those devices we could uninvent without too many regrets.

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