The small Australian town of Romsey, Victoria, has a won a five-year fight to stop poker machines being introduced at their local hotel.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal president ruled yesterday against the introduction of the machines: “On balance, I have concluded that the social impact of gaming machines at the hotel on the well-being of the community will be strongly negative.”

Surveys suggested that about 80 percent of the town’s population opposed the introduction of the machines.

Macedon Ranges Shire mayor, John Letchford, is pleased, “We feel vindicated in our stance with this long-going gaming machine issue and certainly the community has been heard.”

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Poker machines are bad, but are promoted by operators with lots of money and lots of political clout.

Yet could we now be seeing the start of a turn by Australians away from their addiction to the gambling vice?

Governments, too, reap a lot of tax income from gambling.

It will be hard for party-member politicians to act non-corruptly in this matter.

And there are not enough independent politicians to achieve much.

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Only Australia-wide application of massive pressure by ordinary families — sufficient to actually frighten the political parties — could lead to real curbing of the gambling scourge.

Those people who call themselves Christians must take a lead.

The Catholic Church, however, has hamstrung itself a bit — by its routine use of bingo for fund-raising — plus its failure to disown the poker-machine-operating, so-called “Catholic Clubs” in Sydney.