New figures around poker machine losses in Tasmania suggest Launceston was the local government area with the second highest concentration of pokies losses in 2015-16, behind only Glenorchy.
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Independent Denison MHR Andrew Wilkie has released the data, originally sourced from state Treasury, which reveals the losses of nearly every pokies venue in Tasmania.
“Tasmanians have a right to know how much is being taken from their local community by poker machines,” Mr Wilkie said.
It comes after the independent MHR released a list of the 20 “most harmful” pokies venues.
Bass was third on the list of pokies losses by electorate, losing $22 million in 2015-16.
The Mowbray Hotel topped the list of the most pokies losses for a venue in the North at $2.26 million.
Economist John Lawrence, who has dissected the state’s pokies statistics extensively on his blog, said the figures from Mr Wilkie were “99 per cent kosher”, noting that the Westbury Hotel had been omitted from the list.
Pokies losses in the state’s pubs and clubs in 2016-17 equated to $110 million – 30 per cent of that went to the venues themselves, while 70 per cent went to Federal Group.
The net commission that went to pubs and clubs was around $22 million.
Mr Lawrence said this cast doubt on the gaming lobby’s claims that 5000 jobs were at risk under Labor’s policy, questioning how $22 million could be used to pay the wages of so many employees.
But Love Your Local spokesman and Goodstone Group boss Michael Best said the claims of “academics” should be questioned.
“[If] you take a part of your business out, that has serious implications for the profitability of the whole business,” he said.
Mr Best reiterated that Goodstone Group’s nine pokies venues across the state could be forced to lay off 100 of their staff if Labor’s policy is implemented.
On Wednesday, Premier Will Hodgman again backed the jobs claims from the gaming industry.
“Their jobs are under threat. There’s no doubt about that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Fabrizio Carmignani, a professor at Griffith Business School, wrote an article for The Conversation on Wednesday, which sought to dismantle the argument that 5000 jobs could be in danger if pokies are removed from the state’s pubs and clubs.
Tasmanian economist Saul Eslake contributed to the article.
He told Fairfax Media that while he could accept that Labor’s policy could result in “some” job losses, the suggestion that 5000 jobs could be lost was “just nonsense”.
“If the industry is saying that you take pokies out of those places and you lose 5000 jobs, what that amounts to is saying that for every job directly created by pokies in pubs and clubs, there are more than 13 jobs indirectly created,” Mr Eslake said.
“And that would make pokies the most effective employment-creating scheme anyone’s ever devised.
“You’d almost have to argue, ‘Gee, the government should be subsidising pokies not only in pubs and clubs but in post offices because they create so much employment’.”