How to get around the smoking bans - take the machines outside

This news comes from the Illawarra Mercury in NSW. (Sat 23 October 2004, Page 14)

Pokies outside to avoid smoke ban

FORGET dimly lit, smoky gaming venues where the air is conditioned and the weather outside is a world away.

The view of poker machine players in the Illawarra may be about to expand as far as the horizon after plans were announced to investigate creating the region's first alfresco gaming experience.

Shellharbour Workers' Club manager David Whyte confirmed yesterday he was looking at ways of parking poker machines on the award-winning balcony to avoid a smoking ban announced this month.

"We are looking at doing something with an outdoor area with pokie machines," he said.

"The logistics of it are not easy but it is certainly something we are considering."

He predicted the balcony would become one of the most popular areas of the club after July 1, 2007 when the ban comes into force.

Open-air gaming would allow players to continue smoking and avoid a predicted long-term loss of 10 per cent in gaming revenue, which last year would have converted the club's $536,000 profit to a $250,000 loss, according to Mr Whyte.

It comes on top of the much-publicised State Government poker machine tax, which came in on September 1, and which will cost the club $220,000 this year, rising to $1.6 million in 2011.

The club has just released its annual report, which showed a 90 per cent increase in catering profits to $97,000 on the previous year, and a 20 per cent increase in bar trading to almost $1 million. Despite warning that a new user-pays culture will replace many club subsidies, Mr Whyte said these figures were a result of a determination to grow areas other than gaming.

Poker machine profits still dwarf all other areas, however, providing $11.5 million profit last financial year, of which 2.5 per cent - or $289,339 - was paid to about 100 community groups.

Among them was the Shellharbour branch of the Labor Party, whose councillors' refusal to unambiguously reject the gaming tax was called "a slap in the face for clubs in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven region" by ClubsNSW chief executive David Costello.

The club's 20,000 members vote for a new board this weekend, with 12 candidates standing for eight places. The result should be known by tomorrow night.

Well there you have it. Ingenious solutions to a problem that may not even exist, as a 10% reduction in revenue is an invented figure which is not based on any solid evidence. Not only that, the club suggests an end to club subsidies of services it provides to the community and moves to a user-pays model, away from the traditional actions of NSW clubs towards the practices here in Victoria, especially by the pseudo-clubs and club-hotels.

At least in Victoria, the Community Benefit Statements are coming in and we will all be able to see how much the clubs are making and where the money is going. We have been waiting for this transparency for a long time.

What do you think about moving machines outside?

GG