By Gabrielle Costa
A MASSIVE drop in the number of pokies in the City of Maribyrnong has done little to relieve problem gamblers’ woes, with only a slight fall in the amount of money poured into electronic gaming machines.
Late last year – after state laws were changed to reduce the number of pokies in certain areas – 164 machines were ripped out of the municipality, taking the City of Maribyrnong’s total to 511.
That represents a 24 per cent reduction in the number of machines. However, actual net expenditure on pokies fell by only 8.8 per cent in December compared with the same month a year earlier, and just 7.1 per cent for the month of January, compared with January 2007.
For the 2006-07 financial year, poker machine expenditure in the City of Maribyrnong was $1148 per adult – second only to that in the City of Melbourne, which has many venues. The difference was a tiny 27 cents.
Maribyrnong mayor Michelle MacDonald said research commissioned by the State Government and carried out by the independent South Australian Centre for Economic Studies showed the drop in the number of machines would make little difference to takings, which are expected to return to pre-reduction levels in a matter of months.
“It may have an effect in the short term but eventually the machines just work harder so you get back up to your pre-reduction levels of gambling,” she said, adding that machines were concentrated in poorer areas.
“There’s a very cynical placement of these sorts of machines that capture the money of those who are least able to afford it and pokies do exploit people who are poorer and who want to win.
“Often it’s seen as a way of getting out of poverty but in fact what it does is get people deeper and deeper in.
“What we’re doing is taxing poorer people and dressing it up as entertainment.
“And I can state categorically that the City of Maribyrnong has always had a position that that is repulsive.
“I’m repulsed by it. It has actually become obscene.
“The inequity is obscene and the balance against poorer communities compared to some of the wealthiest communities in Australia over in the eastern suburbs or Melbourne is stark.”
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Nick Matteo, the council’s manager of community planning and advocacy, agreed that “the reduction in machines is not proportional to the reduction in income or expenditure”.
He said a significant chunk of the machines were in and around Braybrook, which has a relatively low socio-economic profile.
“I think they take advantage of the psychology of people who are quite disadvantaged. They really believe that that one win is going to get them out of the poo, so to speak, so they keep pumping money into the machines. It’s a deliberate strategy in terms of placing these machines in areas of significant disadvantage,” he said.
The latest data coincides with debate about plans to build a multi-storey licensed club and pokies venue at Maribyrnong’s Edgewater Estate. There can be no new machines at the site – because the municipality has reached its capped level – and if the project is approved, machines will have to be relocated from existing venues.
It also comes as the Federal Government moves to do more to reduce the impact of problem gambling – and follows the State Government’s announcement that ATMs would be removed from gaming venues by the end of 2012.
The council has a stated policy of reducing the number of machines to 120 per cent of the statewide average for municipalities – or 417. But Cr MacDonald said the “ideal number is zero”.
