SYDNEY — One by one, the men and women recounted lives ruined, relationships severed, bank accounts emptied. A young father stared at the ceiling in shame as he described another relapse. A burly man’s voice broke as he recalled stealing from his sons’ piggy bank to fuel his habit. A woman on Zoom clutched her cat to her chest as she described hitting “rock bottom.”

What united them at this meeting in the drab church building in a working-class suburb of Sydney?

It was the pokies.