3 February 2006

Labor pokie donations

| Kerces
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From today’s Crikey sealed section:

12. Labor’s great pokies addiction

By Stephen Mayne

Did anyone else note that ACT Labor’s four biggest donations came from the Canberra Labor Club and Woden Tradesmen’s Club, and totalled $386,397? That’s excluding the additional $120,000 that the Canberra Labor Club donated to the federal ALP in 2004-05.

The impact of these Labor Party owned gambling enterprises is to take money from those Canberrans who are statistically most vulnerable and least able to afford gambling. What does this say about the morality of the ALP?

Then again, Graham Richardson lobbies for casino mogul Kerry Packer, former Queensland Treasurer Keith de Lacy is a director of Cairns Casino, former NSW Premier Barry Unsworth sat on the NSW TAB board, the late John “Bruvva” Ducker was chairman of Aristocrat and former NSW Labor identity Joe Meissner was the president of the Australian Poker Association.

In other words, Labor is the party of gambling, so no wonder they happily pocketed almost $1 million from gaming interests in 2004-05, which included the following:

Canberra Labor Club and Woden Tradesmen’s Club: $386,397, ACT
Australian Hotels Association: $248,000, NSW
Canberra Labor Club: $120,000, National
Clubs NSW: $32,000, NSW
Tattersall’s: $30,000, Victoria
Australian Hotels Association: $27,500, SA
Individual Sydney hotels: $20,000
Mallen Colac Hotel Pty Ltd: $15,000, SA
Star City Casino: $15,000, NSW
Woolworths: $15,400, NSW
Burswood: $15,000, WA
Australian Hotels Association: $2,980, Tasmania
Australian Casino Association: $2000, National

I’ve left off Woolworths and the AHA in WA because the state does not allow pokies in pubs.

Apart from the deluge of pokies cash to the ALP in Canberra, it is amazing how NSW dominates the gaming receipts with more than $300,000 from hotels and casinos. It really is the old rum corp in Sin City.

Interestingly, the once huge donors at Clubs NSW pulled right back to $32,000 in 2004-05, which probably reflects the dastardly new pokies tax that the Carr Government introduced.

However, new Premier Morris Iemma caved in last August, so expect to see much bigger figures from Clubs NSW when we finally get to read the 2006-07 figures in February 2008. Have another look at the 2004-05 figures here.

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Wait a second, we’ve got the most woeful anti-smoking laws in the country? That’ll be news to the “I should be able to smoke wherever the hell I like, god, what is this, Russia” mob…

Although our last conversation on this topic gave us that wonderful tagline from Ssanta, the one regarding bringing back the live bands.

midnitecalla5:44 pm 05 Feb 06

ok diprotodon, i see your correllation but in this case beating that hackneyd old drum about smoking laws where it isnt even mentioned is boring.

true the pokies can and have caused the downfall of many but so has the doggies the footy the nags and Two up . got any thing new to report?

as i said Ho hum.

The issue here is that the ALP get most of their funding from enterprises that take money from those who become addicted to playing the soul-less poker machines, and throwing their families’ cash reserves at the machines, leaving nothing for things like dinner.

With pokies often becoming an addiction who play them, these people are also most likely to have other addictions, such as smoking – is it little wonder that such a progressive jurisdiction such as the ACT has some of the most woeful anto-smoking laws in Australia considering the ALP’s reliance on the pokies?

Vic Bitterman9:42 pm 03 Feb 06

Why would anyone sound surprised that clubs with names of ‘Labor club’, ‘Tradesmans club’ and so on, are big donators to the Labor party?

I mean, is someone so stupid to not understand that the basic premise of the “club of the little people” is aligned with the political party of the “little people”?

Not that labor has done much with the little people of Canberra – paid parking in Tuggers and Belco being a perfect example. Way to go, hurt the wallets of your average Joe worker….

Crikey…..

someone should blow up the pokies

midnitecalla3:10 pm 03 Feb 06

“YAWN” Ho hum , and as Maelinar said what about the libs?

at least the money trail is more obvious ……

This is old news, well for this site anyway.

It’s kind of like trying to compare the kickbacks from corporations the libs are getting…

Late breaking news, the Labor Club gives to the Labor Party, what a shock. More of a surprise is that most of the unions aren’t up there, so much for their influence.

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