Tasmanian anti-poker machine Independent MP Andrew Wilkie and South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon have called on the Raiders club and a bank to pay back the money lost by Canberra professor Prof Laurie Brown, amounting to about $230,000 in two gambling sprees.
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"Regardless of any legal liability the bank or Raiders club might have, surely if they're good corporate citizens they would understand that they have a clear moral responsibility to remedy the situation and to actually pay that money back to Laurie," Mr Wilkie said on Friday.
Senator Xenophon said safeguards that were supposed to be in place at clubs had failed.
"What happened to Laurie can happen to anyone. The industry will try and portray it as people having a 'character flaw or a weakness' but in reality the real flaw here is in the design of the machines which are designed to addict, and it highlights the need for urgent reforms," he said.
The Greens produced figures on Friday showing the ACT has the highest number of machines of any state or territory - with 16.2 machines for every 1000 adults, slightly higher than NSW at 15.8. Next is the Northern Territory, at 11.9 per 1000 adults. Victoria has 6.1 and Western Australia 1.1.
The Greens' Shane Rattenbury will push next week for limits on eftpos in clubs, after it emerged that Prof Brown exploited the loophole to withdraw as much as $3900 in a night.
Mr Wilkie said Prof Brown's story showed the addictive design of poker machines.
"This is a remarkable story, it's simply unbelievable," he said. "When Laurie first got in touch I didn't doubt what she was telling me but I still struggled to believe it. Here's a university professor, an incredibly learned person, and some people would assume the last person who would become a poker machine addict. And she fell as far and landed as hard as anyone . It just went to show how dangerous Australia's high-intensity poker machines are and how intensely addictive they are."
The ACT Racing and Gambling Commission is investigating, but the Raiders says it will not compensate Prof Brown for her losses.
Chief executive Simon Hawkins said Prof Brown showed none of the signs of problem gambling, despite her withdrawals of substantial sums to play the pokies for up to six hours at a time.
Prof Brown and her partner John Formby have a spreadsheet of transactions showing that on at least five occasions between July 2016 and January 2017, she withdrew more than $3300 a night from Raiders Belconnen's eftpos and ATM machines.
On July 5 2016, she withdraw $3990 in eight transactions, including $680 from an ATM machine outside the club, and six eftpos transactions inside the club. Prof Brown insists staff knew she was taking out big sums, because even when she keyed in the amount herself, the machine noisily spat out numerous $20 bills in front of them.
She began the gambling bender in July 2015, initially spending about $250 a night, but escalating from September 2015 when she made her first eftpos withdrawal, of $700.
By February 2016, her withdrawals jumped dramatically again. On February 16, she withdrew $2260 in six transactions, two outside the club. From April, withdrawals in the thousands of dollars a night were the norm, until she was stopped in January 2017 when the bank alerted her partner.
The couple has given the spreadsheet to the Raiders, but Mr Hawkins said given it is the couple's own compilation, it provides no proof the money was withdrawn at the club, nor that it was spent at the club. Even if that proof was provided, Mr Hawkins does not accept the club should have picked up on Prof Brown's gambling problem simply by virtue of the amount of money and number of transactions.
A spokeswoman for Gaming Minister Gordon Ramsay said he met Prof Brown in March but could not comment on the case given the investigation. The government was looking for ways to reduce harm, including cutting machine numbers from 4985 to 4000.
