There is controversy brewing over pokie trust funding that has many concerned that money may not be going back into the communities as it is supposed to. The Problem Gambling Foundation has asked the Department of Internal Affairs to investigate claims about dubious pokie trust funding of the racing industry.

The Gambling Act forbids any gambling operate from reviving any benefits it the distribution of grants. Bill Bradford, the foundation's director of Social Marketing says that the situation has been a concern for some time but that nothing has been done about it yet. He then went on to say that this case raises the big issue of how the funding gets distributes and its inequity.

Bill Bradford said, “The trust continuously denied funding the racing industry, but they have finally owned up so now we hope something can be done to stop this sort of distribution of gambling money". If the distribution of the money was made more visible there would be greater accountability and the communities would get back what they have lost, according to Bradford.

“The problem is that the money comes out of poorer communities and goes to the rich. The people who race horses are not the deserving poor, there is no way they should be the beneficiaries.”

On average a pokie machine brings in about 45,000 but only one in three dollars will go back to where it came from. This is because of the way the pokie trust distributes their money, says Mr. Bradford.












- 2008-04-14