{"id":1795,"date":"2013-02-25T23:16:55","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T12:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com\/?page_id=1795"},"modified":"2013-07-18T15:06:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T05:06:07","slug":"tom-cummings","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/tom-cummings\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cummings"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1792\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1792\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1792\" alt=\"Tom Cummings\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/cyennepic.jpg?resize=300%2C200\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1792\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tom Cummings<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I was a young man when the Kirner government, with the Kennett opposition&#8217;s full support, unleashed poker machines on Victoria. I wasn&#8217;t interested. A few years later, I played a poker machine for the first time&#8230; and I was hooked. It was as simple as that.<\/p>\n<p>Five years later, I walked away from the pokies for the last time, and started the long, painful process of putting my life back together. That didn&#8217;t go according to plan either; these things never do.<\/p>\n<p>And now: I&#8217;m older, wiser and definitely smarter than the foolish young man who got himself in so much trouble all those years ago. These days I write about gambling; my experience, my observations and my take on events. I write about the gambling industry, which so desperately needs to be brought to account but so seldom is. I write about those who struggle against the tide, who sometimes win and sometimes lose. And I write about the politics of gambling, where the toll in human lives is reduced to a couple of points on an opinion poll and a shady deal in parliament.<\/p>\n<p>I write about it all, because it needs to be said. If we continue to ignore the creep of gambling, and the gambling industry, into every corner of our lives, we&#8217;ll wake up one day to find poker machines on our TV screens, and every jackpot will bear Tom Waterhouse&#8217;s grinning face.<\/p>\n<p>I blog at www.cyenne.com. I tweet as @cyenne40. And I write here, at AfHP, for as long as Margo will let me.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was a young man when the Kirner government, with the Kennett opposition&#8217;s full support, unleashed poker machines on Victoria. I wasn&#8217;t interested. A few years later, I played a poker machine for the first time&#8230; and I was hooked. It was as simple as that. Five years later, I walked away from the pokies [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3t0mw-sX","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}