Poker machine facts worth examining

IN his response to the recent parliamentary inquiry report, Federal Group’s Daniel Hanna says he is disappointed the facts of Tasmania’s gaming industry have been misrepresented in debate.

Yet within hours of the report being released, Treasurer Peter Gutwein was saying the latest Social and Economic Impact Study had shown problem gambling had fallen by 25 per cent. This claim has been repeated by the pokies lobby for two years, even though the study concluded that “the proportion of Tasmanian adults experiencing the most acute problems associated with gambling is unchanged”.

What the Treasurer did is highlight the headline problem percentage without acknowledging that, because of the small sample size, trends cannot be identified from focusing on this statistic alone. While the figure was 0.5 per cent of the adult population in 2013 compared with 0.7 per cent in 2011, it was 0.5 per cent in 2008 and only 0.18 per cent in 2006. By the Treasurer’s own logic, problem gambling has gone up more than 250 per cent since 2006.

The study makes it clear that to identify trends in problem gambling, the socalled “at risk” group must be included. These are people also experiencing problems with their gambling but are not yet at the most severe level. This group comprised 2.4 per cent of all Tasmanian adults in 2013, the same as 2011.

The Treasurer said the fall in number of people playing poker machines and reduction in turnover was evidence problem gambling was declining. But while there was a large decline of 35 per cent in the proportion of Tasmanians who play poker machines between 2008 and 2013, the amount lost on the machines only fell about 5 per cent. In other words, the pokies industry managed to extract higher losses from their diminishing pool of players.

It would be helpful if the pokies lobby stopped pretending the machines are no more harmful then other gambling. The first study found that of the $98 million lost by problem gamblers each year in Tasmania, $85 million of this was lost on pokies. The second study found 48 per cent of losses on poker machines came from those experiencing adverse consequences from their gambling.