Canberra's losses to poker machines in the past financial year were just under $179 million, nearly $80 million more than previously estimated.
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A Legislative Assembly Committee was told yesterday that as much as $1billion may have churned through the city's 4954 poker machines in 2010-11.
![Pokies shock: punters lost $80m more Pokies shock: punters lost $80m more](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/1827dc8e-1dc1-4a1f-b437-c399ed49dcca.jpg/r0_0_406_500_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The Canberra Times reported last week that the annual snapshot by the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission of pokies revenue showed that Canberrans gambled away nearly $101 million on the pokies in the period, the heaviest losses since 2006-07.
But Gambling and Racing Commission chief executive Greg Jones told the Assembly's standing committee on public accounts yesterday the losses were much heavier than reported, at $179 million, or more than $600 for every adult in the territory.
Pokies barons were left with $101million after they paid their gambling tax and an agreed figure of 24 per cent for the costs of operating their machines. The revised figures for the losses show an increase of more than $6 million on the previous year, 2009-2010, when nearly $173million was gambled away on Canberra's pokies.
But as revenue from gaming machines rose, operators reduced their mandated community contributions by 11 per cent to just less than $12million.
Mr Jones said yesterday that he calculated that the turnover figure could be as high as $1 billion.
''We have some rough figures on that, which is around about six or seven times what the player loss is,'' Mr Jones said. ''So with a player loss of round $180 million, six times that would be around about $1 billion, that would be the churn if you like, the turnover.''
Mr Jones said that he and his colleagues were surprised at the scope of the increases in gambling losses. ''We weren't anticipating that, we budgeted for $1.5 million to $2million lower than that''.
Mr Jones said he believed gambling losses would stabilise again.
''We haven't really changed our expectations, we just think that what happened in the financial year just gone was a bit of an unexplained blip.''
Mr Jones also said that there would be no penalty for the Eastlake Group, who bought a new gaming venue, the Kaleen Sports Club, and tried to write-off the $5.2 million purchase price as a ''community contribution''.
''Any application for community contributions are just rejected and identified in the report, there's no penalty,'' he said.