Poker machines may be illegal

A potentially landmark case to have poker machines declared in breach of Australian consumer law is being considered by a leading Melbourne law firm.

Maurice Blackburn said it was working with the newly-formed Alliance for Gambling Reform on what legal strategies could be pursued to crack down on pokies.

Lawyer Jacob Varghese said they were exploring whether the machines breached consumer laws because they were designed to deceive users and encourage addictive behaviour.

Mr Varghese said the case was still in its early stages and had not yet been lodged in any state or federal court.

"Under consumer law it's illegal to do things which are misleading and deceptive," he said.

"We think there's a genuine argument that some of the behaviour by the pokie designers is misleading and deceptive in that it makes people think things are happening that are not actually happening. 

"One of those things is losses described as wins, in which the machine will act as if you've won but really you've net-lost. You might have won 30 cents on the dollar you played.

"You've still lost 70 cents but you still get all the stimulus and reaction from the machine as if you've won.

"The neuroscience shows that gives you a little bit of a hit, and that hit is not dissimilar to the hit you get when you take a drug."Mr Varghese said past cases brought against poker machine companies had often failed because the individual making the claim had largely been considered responsible for their own addiction. 

But he said new scientific research now suggested that was not always the case, as the machines were designed to "entrap" them into addiction.

"The problem is the players, sit there in the chair, are unaware that this is what the machines are doing to them," he said.

He said they would not necessarily push for a ban on pokies, but the introduction of clear warnings, like those on cigarettes, or to the machines themselves.

"If they're going to be as dangerous as they are at extracting money out of people and encouraging addictive behaviour, they need to be much more upfront about what they're doing," he said.