Aristocrat Leisure and Club Australia join the gambling debate
The Australian gambling debate continues to roll on, with Aristocrat Leisure being the latest gambling company to weigh in with proposals as to how they think that the problem could be more easily regulated. Many see their proposal as one that is stuffed with self-interest though – including the man heading up the inquiry, MP Andrew Wilkie.
The proposals put forward by Aristocrat Leisure encompassed many different points, but the one that was the most talked about was their idea for a “machine based” solution to end the problem of gambling addiction in the country.
This was due to their belief that a monitoring system – an idea muted by the government recently – wouldn’t be achievable by the government’s target of 2012, mainly due to the complexity of the task. In fact, their submission stated that this wouldn’t even be possible by 2014, therefore putting the whole overhaul of the system back by 2 years.
The main reason why pro-reform figures see this announcement in a suspicious light is due to the fact that Aristocrat Leisure say they would roll out this system as part of their normal replacement cycle, which means that they would not have to interrupt operations in order to comply with any future regulations.
This would obviously save the company huge amounts of money and would therefore ensure that their business remains a viable one through the period of change.
In response to this scepticism, Aristocrat Leisure stated that a new pokie games machine retails at about $25,000, whereas implementing a software upgrade would cost them just $3000 per machine.
This, they said, means that their suggestion in fact would cost them more to implement – therefore meaning that they have taken a cut in profits in order to assist those with gambling problems.
In addition to Aristocrat Leisure weighing in with their argument yesterday, Club Australia also joined the chorus of businesses opposing the methods that the Australian government want to introduce to curb gambling problems.
In a long statement they essentially said that the Australian government have underestimated the amount of work and logistics that will need to go in to setting up the system that they have proposed.
They also stated that the system will have a hugely detrimental affect on the smaller clubs in Australia, who current only see about $25 worth of profit a day from each machine that they own.
This, they say, means that the disputed figure for the amount of money the government thinks a machine will lose per day under new regulations - $1.50 – will actually represent a large percentage of income for these clubs.
The final results of these inquiries are still very much in the balance, with both sides seeing significant numbers of support being gained in recent weeks.
Whatever does happen though, everyone can be sure that it will be rather a long time before the ramifications of any changes are seen in their entirety.
Tags: aristocrat, australia, Australian gambling, Pokies reform
This entry was written by admin on Friday, June 10th, 2011 at 1:28 am and is filed under News.
