FOR Victorians, gambling used to be a seemingly harmless pastime indulged in by elderly ladies taking bus trips across the border.
That all changed when Joan Kirner legalised gaming machines and the casino in 1991 to bolster state finances after the collapse of the State Bank.
Today, close to 30,000 poker machines can be found in hundreds of pubs and clubs across the state, and 879 of those are spread across 12 venues in Casey.
Victorian Treasurer John Lenders said late last year the number of pokies would remain capped at 30,000 after pokies operator Tatts asked to be given more machines when state licences expired in 2012.
But with the state now so reliant on gaming as a major form of revenue, there is growing concern that gambling and its associated problems will only escalate. Victoria reaps about $911 million in pokies taxes, just behind NSW, which takes in $990 million a year.
Gambling opponents say legalised gambling is bad social policy, resulting in alarming levels of relationship breakdown, depression, family neglect, embezzlement, theft, and involvement in organised crime.
From last July to December, a record $61 million was lost on pokies in Casey alone, and it's an educated guess that not all of that money was legally obtained.
A joint Australian Institute of Criminology and PricewaterhouseCoopers paper issued four years ago found that, after greed, gambling was the second-most frequent motivation for convicted serious-fraud offenders.
Of the 183 convicted serious-fraud offenders in the study, the most common offence committed to finance gambling was obtaining finance or credit by deception.
High-profile cases have highlighted the insidious nature of gambling-related crime. In March, 2001 former Geelong mayor and accountant Frank De Stefano, then 53, pleaded guilty in Geelong Magistrates Court to stealing $8,059,889 of clients' money between 1995 and April 2000. Most of it had been spent on gambling, largely at Crown Casino.
Last year, a gambler who stole $7.3 million from Bendigo Bank after being seduced by Crown Casino was sentenced to at least four years behind bars. The woman, 39, was a loans officer at Preston when she stole the cash between July 2001 and May 2004.
Welfare and counselling providers see the other side to the gambling story - social breakdown and, in extreme cases, suicide.
Coroners Court statistics show at least 70 gambling addicts or their partners killed themselves between June 2001 and September 2005.
Of those, 68 were suicides by addicts and two were addicts' partners.
Victorian InterChurch Gambling Taskforce chairman Mark Zirnsak was one of those campaigning against the application for 60 pokie machines at the $90 million Casey Towers project.
Dr Zirnsak said gambling-related social breakdown had a huge financial cost. "The Productivity Commission study back in 1999 found there were 1600 gambling-related divorces each year in Australia.
Dr Zirnsak said municipalities like Casey were most vulnerable and research showed that residents in lower socio-economic areas, as well as people from non-English-speaking backgrounds, were more likely to have gambling problems.
One of dozens of counselling providers servicing Casey, Gamblers Help Southern counselled 63clients in Narre Warren and 42 in Cranbourne in 2005-06, but says that for every gambler it sees another 10 do not seek help.
Casey Anti-Gambling Group committee member and Berwick Church of Christ pastor Graeme Cann said church counsellors regularly hear shocking stories about the effects of gambling addiction.
"There is always a high social cost with gambling, not just to the people who gamble but to the people around them, and the people who love them.
Mr Cann said one resident with a severe gambling addiction lost everything he had, got back on his feet after extensive counselling, then lost it all a second time, and his family.
"He had a wife and four children, which means they lost everything too. It's that flow-on effect that makes gambling such a community issue."
Cranbourne Salvation Army counsellor Daryl Watson said welfare or counselling clients did not always admit to gambling because of the social stigma and shame.
"But when we see the same people coming in all the time needing food and financial advocacy, and there is not really a solid reason why they are not making ends meet, we have to [assume] that gambling could be an issue.
The problem for counsellors is that unless people admit to a gambling problem, they really won't get the right help."
Cranbourne Information and Support Services manager Leanne Petrides said problem gamblers often put their gambling needs before the needs of their families, which led to enormous feelings of shame and guilt.
"It's such an incredibly strong addiction. Homeowners will default on rates and mortgage and get behind on all their bills. Beyond all good sense, they will do whatever they can to continue to gamble."
Ms Petrides said one client said she wanted to chop her hands off to force herself to stop gambling.
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