Our woman in Sydney: Forgiveness is easy if you're a sportsman

Australians idolise their sporting heroes, but exactly how indulgent are they prepared to be if an idol turns out to have feet – or even another extremity – of clay? Very indulgent indeed, if the sport is Australian Rules and the man in question is probably the best player of his generation.

Aussie Rules football is an exciting, fast-moving sport that arouses passions beyond description in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. While it is not quite the world game, it is a religion in those three states and, until March this year, Wayne Carey was a God.

Carey was captain of the Kangaroos, a leading Melbourne team, and his best friend, Anthony Stevens, was the club vice-captain. A beautiful friendship ended when Carey was caught in flagrante in a lavatory with Stevens's wife, Kelli, during a birthday party at the home of another player, Glen Archer. Stevens saw the pair emerge in a dishevelled state; Carey's outraged colleagues refused to play alongside him, leaving him with no choice but to quit the team.

The scandal titillated the nation for weeks and set off a frenzied debate on morality and "mateship" – the sacred bond of friendship between Australian blokes transgressed so brazenly by Carey. The fallen idol went into purdah and said he would probably never play football again, while the Kangaroos' competitors made plain that they would not touch him with a bargepole.

What a difference six months make. Rejuvenated, apparently, by trips to Memphis and Las Vegas, Carey recently reappeared and let it be known to the football world that he was on the market, provoking an unseemly scramble by clubs, which had been privately salivating all along at the prospect of snaring a player of his calibre.

After being courted by no fewer than nine teams, Carey signed with the Adelaide Crows last week, the deal sealed over a barbecue at the mansion of a board member, Alan Shepherd. The board is over the moon and Carey's new team-mates are thrilled; as for the sports commentators who previously heaped scorn on him, they are urging that the lad's indiscretions be pardoned.

If the transformation from pariah to hot property seems indecently swift, it is worth bearing in mind a couple of points. First, that when it comes to sex and sport, Australians operate on a principle of selective morality. Carey was ostracised not because he cheated on his wife, Sally, but because he betrayed his best friend and vice-captain. There would not have been the same chorus of disgust if he had cuckolded a player from a rival club.

The real villain of the piece – at least according to Carey – was Kelli, the femme fatale who inveigled him into a compromising position. In a recent TV interview, a not very contrite Carey said: "I went to the toilet and, in front of all those people, Kelli walked in after me." Their affair lasted only a month, he confided, and in case anyone was wondering, he never loved her. (Both marriages, incidentally, appear to have survived.)

The other point is that Australians are willing to overlook almost any sin for the sake of sporting success. So Lleyton Hewitt had another tantrum? Give the boy a break, he won Wimbledon after all. So Shane Warne swore at spectators again? But the man is a legendary leg-spin bowler. The public loves to watch Carey play and he could win the Crows the premiership. It remains to be seen what the strait-laced matrons of Adelaide, which is nicknamed the City of Churches, will make of him.

Carey's rehabilitation is not quite complete, and he did not help his own case when he went on a three-day drinking binge earlier this month and then sacked his manager, Ricky Nixon, on air after Nixon told Melbourne radio listeners all about the binge. The greatest challenge for Carey is to win over the Crows' fans, particularly their numerous female supporters, but already the signs are that opposition is crumbling. As a pig farmer, Frank Heyne, told Adelaide Talkback Radio last week: "Every footballer does it, it's just he's a high-profile player and he got caught. We should forgive and forget and move on."

Pokies: the money-spinner that's proving to be rather costly

I poked my head around the entrance to Yarra Bay Sailing Club in eastern Sydney the other day, expecting to find a boathouse, a merchandise shop, perhaps a bar and lounge area. Instead I was greeted by banks of electronic fruit machines, known here as "pokies", and solitary men and women hunched over them.

Australians are the world's biggest gamblers, and the relaxation of licencing laws has turned virtually every pub and club into a mini-casino. Pokies have colonised space once reserved for dining and live music; in pubs, whole rooms are set aside for the machines and drinkers strain to hear conversations drowned out by clunking and whirring.

Gambling has been part of Australian culture since the days of the First Fleet, and the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge were built with the proceeds of state lotteries. But it is now a massive social problem and the country's Asian immigrants appear to be most susceptible, partly because of language difficulties and cultural dislocation.

The largest array of pokies is found in Sydney's Star City Casino, which lays on a courtesy bus service for Vietnamese residents of the outlying suburb of Cabrammatta. Asian people represent nearly half of Star City's clientele, despite making up only 5 per cent of the population.

Now Casino Canberra, three hours away, is following Star City's example, offering Cabrammatta folk a free shuttle bus and a weekend in the national capital for only £20. There is just one catch, though: they have to spend £350 in the casino.

The scheme has been denounced as a cynical ploy by senior Vietnamese figures, who say that gambling addiction has already reached crisis proportions in the community. A Cabrammatta councillor, Thang Ngo, called on the government to prevent casinos from luring people into temptation.

But the plea is likely to fall on deaf ears, for clubs and pubs are not the only beneficiaries of the national gambling bug. State governments receive 10 per cent of their revenue in the shape of tax on pokies and have proved unsurprisingly reluctant to address this particular little problem.

Price of freedom

A year ago, a Norwegian freighter named MV Tampa, sailed over the horizon with a cargo of Afghan asylum-seekers. While some people were horrified by the government's refusal to let the refugees land, most applauded the decision.

The crackdown on illegal immigrants has worked; not a single boatload has since landed. Those who made it before the door slammed shut languish in detention centres, where – it has emerged – they are expected to pay for the privilege.

A Pakistani man, Shahid Qureshi, spent six months behind bars; on his release, he was presented with a bill for £9,000. One of his visa conditions is that he may not work. It could only happen in John Howard's Australia.