SWAN Hill district residents spent around $150,000 less on poker machines last financial year, though a gambler’s help service believes gambling is still a problem in the local community.
Data released by the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation showed the overall expenditure on electronic gaming machines in the Swan Hill local government area’s four licensed venues in 2015/16 was around $6.53 million.
The figure was approximately $150,000 below the previous year’s total of $6.68 million. and just under $550,000 less than the total expenditure in 2012/2013.
The commission’s data also showed the adult population across the district increased between 2012 and 2014, from 16,956 to 17,297, meaning the average pokies expenditure fell from $424 per person to $386 — a trend likely to have continued last year as gambling expenditure declined.
However, the community service manager at community support organisation St Luke’s, Phil Eddy, said the figures weren’t sophisticated because they couldn’t glean how much of the expenditure was spent as recreational gambling and how much of it was the result of problem gambling.
Based on figures from St Luke’s, which runs a gambler’s help program in Swan Hill, Mr Eddy estimated the district could be home to around 800 problem gamblers.
“We saw around-about 500 or 600 people last year in the region and we know — from what evidence and research tells us — that for every person that comes forward, there’s another 10 that are affected badly by problem gambling, people spending more than they can afford,” Mr Eddy said.
“The main thing to focus on here is these figures go up and down and, at the end of the day, we still know that this is six-and-a-half million dollars of losses in the city from poker machines.”
For more on this story, grab a copy of Friday’s Guardian (July 31).
