Sport and charity get of less than quarter of the money available to them from poker machine revenue, according to a report delivered to ACT MLAs last night.
The other three-quarters goes to club member benefits and political donations.
And the money available for donation is just 11 per cent of net poker machine revenue. So sport and charity are getting 2.7 per cent of net poker machine revenue, and just 0.23 per cent of money that gets put into the machines.
Sport and charity get just $2.2 million of the $950 million that go through the machines in a year. They get a further $540,000 in kind from the clubs.
The clubs themselves get $5.2 million, and political, union and lobby groups get $1,330,000.
Some of the large political donations were: from the Canberra Tradesmen’s Union Club: union accommodations $619,000; miners’ fighting fund $250,000; maritime union $10,000; Cuba union $3525; from the Canberra Labor Club $375,000 to the Labor Party; from the Hellenic Club $1839 to the Liberal Party and $1769 to the Labor Party; from the Southern Cross Club $2500 to the Stefaniak Election Campaign.
The report scrutinises what clubs say are their commitment to the community.
For example, the Tradesmen’s Club announced earlier this year that it had given $3.9 million to charity. This report shows that in fact charity and sport got only $600,000 and $3.3 million went to members’ only facilities and political donations.
On the other hand the club says it paid $5.5 million in wages, more than if it had operated on a commercial basis.
The report, by the Commissioner for ACT Revenue, was commissioned by the Government last year after concerns whether clubs were living up to their commitments to the community. Clubs get major federal and territory tax concessions in return for their community involvement.
Clubs say they contribute widely to the community. Hotels and others assert that some clubs with huge membership and only nominal membership fees are little more than tax-free pubs themselves.
Between 85 and 87 per cent of the $950 million goes back to players. It leaves $126 million gross poker machine revenue.
The report subtracted ACT tax, wages and machine running costs from the $126 million to come up with a net revenue of $86.6 million, of which $9.4 million was available for donation to the community, less that a quarter of which went to sport and charity.
The report has to be tabled in the Assembly within the next 10 sitting days.
The report said that some of the 72 ACT clubs with poker machines had not strictly complied with the Gaming Machine Act in supplying information, but that the spirit of the ACT had been complied with.
Clubs are required to list charitable donations. The report said the inclusion of non-charitable donations (back to the club for members’ facilities and benefits and political donations, for example), was not strictly required by the ACT, but they would help the Government get a more precise picture of the extent to which clubs contribute to the community.
Canberra has had poker machines in clubs for 22 years. Since then the hotel market has shrunk. Clubs now provide 2000 jobs in Canberra. Clubs only pay federal company tax on that amount imputed to be profit from non-members. On average that comes to 7 per cent of profit, compared to the 36 per cent company rate. They get big concessions in ACT taxes.
The question for the Government is whether the tax concessions are worth the $2.2 million that clubs give sport and charity or whether it should remove the concessions and make distribution itself.