Pokie Expenditure and Community Support

In April 2012 Uniting Care commissioned some research into assessing the poker machine expenditure in communities versus the benefit received to the community the expenditure took place.

The aim of the research was to improve the information that the public had on the spending that took place in communities in relation not only to the money that was put back into the community but also in relation to median income of the community.

The research was conducted in 41 Commonwealth Electoral Divisions (CEDs), so that a good cross section of Australian society could be captured and the key findings were as follows:

• As a proportion of median individual income (the whole population, not just poker machine users), poker machine expenditure varies significantly. In Blaxland (NSW) losses equal 8.2% of median individual income – which is proportionately more than 16 times greater than the expenditure in Kooyong (Vic), where poker machine losses equal 0.5% of median individual income.

• Poker machine losses tend to be higher in communities with lower incomes. At the CED level, those communities with lower incomes also tend to have higher numbers of poker machines, a factor that is also associated with higher average losses.

• Of the 41 CEDs examined, it was found that more than half have user losses at levels greater than 10% of median individual income. These calculations indicate that poker machine users in Blaxland (NSW) spent more than $7,000 p.a., or more than a third of median individual income, on poker machines in 2011. In five other CEDs examined, user losses were also estimated to exceed 20% of median individual income. These were: Maribyrnong (Vic), Banks (NSW), Bruce (Vic), Richmond (NSW), and Hotham (Vic).

• Levels of community funding and support provided by poker machine operators is fairly small in comparison to the amount of money lost by poker machine users within local communities. For example, in one CED (Blaxland, NSW) where losses amount to more than $177 million p.a., the value of claimed community benefits was 1.4% ($2.5 million), which was only a tiny bit more than the NSW average of 1.3%.

As we can see from these key findings it seems that lower income families who cannot afford to spend cash on pokies are the ones who are being targeted (with extra pokie machines in their communities) and are spend proportionally lots more of their income than the financially better off. This would seem to point to the pre-commitment spending being a good idea in Australia – especially in areas such as Blaxland (NSW) in which pokie machine users appear to be spending up to 33% of their median income.

However pre-commitment this is not something that has worked in other parts of the world – an independent study of 3000 people in Norway found serious problem gambling had increased from 1.3 per cent to 2.1 per cent in the past three years, despite having betting limits. So it seems that the answer is not as straight forward as that. Indeed you start to get into some very tricky areas of encroaching on personal liberty.

It would seem that the obvious solution would be that poker machine operators should be putting more of the public’s spending back in the communities that really need it. Taking the example of Blaxland NSW… With over $177million spent on pokies p.a. it would seem unfair that only $2.5million is put back in to a community that clearly needs support. Here at Online Pokies 4U we are in favour of the poker machine operators putting a higher proportion of a community’s spend back into community projects, especially if that community has a low median income. If poker machine operators were to put back only 5% of spending back in Blaxland then the community then we’d be looking at 8.85m in community funding which could make a real difference to people’s live in the area.

A link to the original research published by Uniting Care Australia can be found here.