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In 2022, ILGA approved 12 applications for extended trading hours for gaming machines and refused one. In 2023, it approved three, partially approved three and refused nine.
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Liquor and Gaming NSW data indicates that hotels with extended trading hours in metropolitan NSW earn around double the gaming machine profits of those with standard trading hours.
STRS Consultant Services statistician Matthew Stevens, who worked on the Roy Morgan study, said the later at night that people played the pokies, the more likely they were to be experiencing gambling harm.
“It was really, really clear,” Stevens said. “There really isn’t much demand at all [for gambling venues to be open after midnight] and the demand that is there is from people at the higher end of problem gambling.
“But if you bring in gambling cards with set limits, it doesn’t matter when venues are open. They can be open 24 hours because once people hit that limit, they can’t gamble any more.”
Independent panel members are prevented by confidentiality agreements from commenting on the gambling reform report until it is released publicly. Their draft report proposed a gambling regime that would require every poker machine player to open a personal gaming account linked to a central database, with default spending limits that they could change or over-ride.
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