Council
ducked for cover this week when it came to making a submission on extra poker
machines for the Ulladulla area.
Council’s
community development group put forward a report asking Council to send a
submission to Liquor and Gaming opposing the application by the Ex Servos for
more machines and to take a stand and create a policy position on poker
machines generally in the area.
Councillor’s
Guile and Watson put a motion forward that the club be allowed to address
Council on their position, when I questioned if there was enough time to
receive a submission from the club before the submission date closed a barrage
of poor commentary came my way- accusing me of all sorts of things. I wanted to
know when the submission closed and no one could tell me. As we worked our way
through the item it was revealed that submission closed on the 19 July.
I wasn’t suspicious
that Councillor’s were buying time and trying to avoid sending a submission at
all, but the debate certainly revealed that without putting a closing date on
it Council would effectively dodge a decision.
The
application had been made by the Ulladulla Ex- Servos Club for an extra 20
machines- doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that each machine nets
about $55000 per year, that’s a potential income increase of $1.1million.
Poker machine
revenue in the 2011 financial year was $4.4.mill from the $7.1 mill total
revenue for the club.
An
aggregated figure from the four clubs in our small area shows about $12million
making its way into the machine slots.
You can
check out the financials of all the clubs online at their websites as they must
declare openly their incomes. ( See Links Below)
I found
these figures absolutely staggering for an area that has roughly 19% of its
working age population receiving Centerlink payments, and over 50% of the population
considered low income and suffering from underemployment.
In some of
the financial statements it’s impossible to gauge what amount of the clubs
profits are being returned to the community through grants and sponsorships, I
think this should be something more readily identifiable in their financial
statements.
Some of the
clubs offer up space for functions at zero or little cost for community
fundraisers, but this is surely balanced by bar take and pokies spend.
After
skimming through the four clubs financial statements I came away thinking that
more pokies in this area are not called for, especially high loss machines that
can draw $1500 an hour.
So I think I
will make an independent submission to the liquor and gaming authority advising
that any new machines in this area should only be replacing old and out-dated
machines.
Council had
some guts earlier in the year when it told Dan Murphy’s not to build a super
grog shop in a socially disadvantaged area, so saying no to more pokies would be a good way to help
protect the vulnerable.
Links to Clubs to examine their financial statements.
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