Presented by Robert Clark MP		www.robertclark.net

Labor short-changes Whitehorse on Gambling Support Funds

News Release - Wednesday, 21st January 2004

Whitehorse residents have lost $223.2 million on poker machines in the last four years but the Bracks Government only returned 0.2 per cent of that money to the community through the Community Support Fund (CSF).

Over the four financial years between 1999 and 2003, the Bracks Government has approved only one CSF project in Whitehorse at a cost of $500,000.

The latest CSF figures, from the 2002-03 Department of Victorian Communities Annual Report, show that Steve Bracks has broken his June 2000 promise that a proper share of the taxes raised from gaming machines would be fed back into communities to projects which deliver genuine community benefit.

In four years of the Bracks Government, Victorians have lost a total of $9.4 billion on poker machines. Of this, $593 million has been allocated to the CSF. But the vast majority of this CSF funding ($491 million) has been committed to so-called "umbrella projects" which supposedly have statewide benefit.

The CSF was an initiative of the previous Liberal Government to ensure money spent on gaming machines came back to the local community through good quality, useful projects.

But the Bracks Government is clearly not returning the money lost to gaming machines to individual communities, such as those in Whitehorse.

In 2002-2003, more than 92 per cent of CSF funds went to Government departments for "umbrella projects."

However, it is impossible to determine how communities have benefited from these projects. There is no transparency as to how these funds are being spent and what the outcomes have been. Much of the spending is simply to pay for services which should have been provided out of general government revenue, but which the Bracks Government cannot afford to fund due to its mismanagement of Victoria's finances.

It is time that Steve Bracks came clean on how CSF money is being spent and what it is delivering to communities such as Whitehorse.

It is not good enough that a community that lost over $223 million to gaming machines received just $500,000 back to assist the community and residents with gambling problems.