Pokies Still Jackpot For Gambling Taxes
The Age
Thursday December 18, 2008
VICTORIA and NSW collect two-thirds of all state and territory gambling taxes and almost 10per cent of state and territory tax revenue comes from gambling, according to new report.
Poker machine taxes make up the bulk of the money, according to a paper from the Productivity Commission that examined state finances from 2006-07 as part of its gambling inquiry.The inquiry follows the commission's landmark 1999 gambling report that said more than 290,000 adult Australians had a gambling problem.The 1999 report said about 2.5 per cent of Victoria's adult population had a gambling problem.It is has not yet been decided if the commission will again measure levels of problem gambling or rely on an analysis of state government problem surveys since 1999.The commission's chairman, Gary Banks, said any new survey would not be comparable to the 1999 study because of changed survey techniques."Whether the precise percentage of problem gamblers is 1, 2 or 3 per cent doesn't really matter in terms of how important this issue is as an issue for public policy," he said."So the focus of this inquiry, more so than the last one, is really about policy approaches - what approaches have worked and which ones haven't and what are the implications," he said.Mr Banks said problem gambling was widely recognised as a significant issue.Charles Livingstone, of Monash University's department of health science, said the Productivity Commission study should "have a good hard look at harm-minimisation measures"."What can be done to make devices safer - 85 per cent of problem gambling comes from poker machines, so that's the place to start," he said.Responses to the issues paper are due by the end of March, with a final report to be released next November.
© 2008 The Age