Cashless Pokies – Queensland’s Community Clubs Fearful of Imminent Legislative Change

The NSW Opposition has also flagged a policy fix via a trial of cashless gaming, cash feed-in limits to be reduced from $5000 to $500 and mandatory facial recognition.

Former CEO of Clubs Queensland, Mr. Doug Flockhart, said the rumour mill across community clubs nationally is raging that Queensland will be next. 

“Pokies have long been regarded as a “cash cow” for NSW Community Clubs and Pubs, where you turn on the lights and welcome the punters through the door to be entertained and spend their hard earned, by all corners of the debate,” Mr Flockhart said. 

“Inevitably any change to whether people can use cash will see revenue significantly diminished. This could in turn mean the demise of many NSW Community Clubs if their reliance and primary focus on pokies revenue continues.” 

Mr Flockhart said during his 11-year tenure at Clubs Queensland, the consistent message shared with Queensland Clubs was “diversified income streams” are a must, lessening their financial dependence on poker machine revenue.

“The reality is that although gaming is still significant, statistically poker machine revenue continues to decline across Queensland, and there is always increasing competition for Queensland’s 2.3m community club members, by way of attracting a share of their wallet,” he said. 

Why are Community Clubs concerned?

Government regulators in Queensland are urging the Attorney General, the Hon Shannon Fentiman, to implement similar “pokie reforms” within this term of government, given these recent NSW government and opposition announcements. 

Mr Flockhart believes the Queensland government and the Office of Gaming Regulation are still shaken by the STAR Casino activity in Queensland at its Brisbane and Gold Coast casinos.  Additionally, the pressure for change from concerned community groups and advocates for appropriate reform, in the responsible gambling space and more broadly given increasing concerns around harm.

“When Poker Machines are front and centre in an election campaign, and the CEO of Clubs NSW is marched out the door for inappropriate comments as part of his counter lobbying efforts, most would accept the writing is on the wall for imminent change,” Mr Flockhart said.  

STAR was “independently” deemed unfit to hold a casino license in both NSW and QLD, even though STAR is operationally regulated by the Queensland Casino Control Regulation, supposedly the Gold Standard for Qld government regulators. 

The independent review stated STAR deliberately misled the regulator to cover up China UnionPay transactions as hotel expenses when their primary use was gambling and allegedly lured high rollers who were banned from casinos in other states to gamble at its Queensland casinos. The review says there were “serious deficiencies” in the company’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) program.

STAR subsequently received a $100m fine from both the NSW and Queensland governments, with the appointment of a special manager by both. 

Mr Flockhart says that community clubs have their backs to the wall “competitively” with – inflation, online shopping, online gambling, increasing interest rates, streaming services, home food and beverage deliveries and more, all impacting the discretionary spending war that is raging for “market share growth”. 

“The competition and trading environment is tough! Add to this the mature age “community club” demographic and the appeal of the pokies for younger demographics being marginal at best,” he said.

“It’s easy to imagine that cashless pokies in Queensland could see many community clubs struggle, given their current dependence on poker machine revenue, and lack of profitable diversification strategies.” 

Mr Flockhart says there are, however, options for community clubs and their members! 

An innovative and almost immediate diversification fix for community clubs across Queensland and Australia, or any membership-based organisation in fact, is the globally patented Erth Point System.

www.ErthPoints.com is designed to help community clubs, NFP’s/Charities leverage their member’s everyday shopping to generate passive income that would otherwise be undiscovered.

“The Erth Point system, in a nutshell, delivers significant passive income to beneficiaries (Community Clubs) from everyday businesses’ existing marketing budgets, via the club’s members,” he said. 

There is no cost to the clubs’ members, or the club and the system can exist alongside a community club’s existing loyalty and rewards offers.  

“As gambling (specifically pokies) revenue inevitably declines, exacerbated by the recent declaration in NSW and with Queensland likely to follow, the Erth Point System’s passive income would be the financial panacea, set to assist all community clubs.”

Ends