federal politics
19 Jan 2012
Pokie Reform On Life Support
The Government's backslide on poker machine reform is poor politics and terrible policy. It's disheartening to see Labor blowing the gains it made in late 2011 in this way, writes Ben Eltham
The Government is walking back from its agreement with Tasmanian Independent Andrew Wilkie to introduce mandatory pre-commitment on poker machines.
Since returning from holidays for 2012, Julia Gillard has repeatedly refused to restate her support of mandatory pre-commitment for gaming machine punters. Negotiations are currently underway because Wilkie set a May deadline for the legislation so that mandatory pre-commitment could be introduced by 2014. That outcome seems less and less likely. If the 2010 deal with Andrew Wilkie is not dead, it’s certainly on life support.
It’s not hard to discern the cause of the Government’s new-found caution when it comes to mandatory pre-commitment. The clubs lobby and its allies in the media and in the New South Wales Rugby League have waged a savage and dishonest campaign against the changes. Not only has that campaign been highly cynical, it has also been highly personal, with Labor MPs such as Mike Kelly in Eden-Monaro personally singled out in nasty attacks.
There’s no question that Labor backbenchers and factional leaders have grown worried about the electoral impact of the clubs campaign. But until now, the Government has had little choice but to go along with poker machine reform. Gillard inked a deal with Wilkie in the wake of the 2010 election as the price for his support of her minority government. And Wilkie’s vote on the floor of the House of Representatives was of course essential for the survival of the Gillard Government. So for most of 2011 Labor did its best to grit its teeth and ignore the campaign.
All that changed in the last sitting week of Parliament last year, when Labor enticed disaffected Liberal-National backbencher Peter Slipper to turn his back on his colleagues and become the new Speaker of the House of Representatives. With Slipper ensconced in the Speaker’s chair, his vote is no longer available to Tony Abbott and the Coalition. That gives Labor an extra vote in the person of former speaker Harry Jenkins. It also makes Andrew Wilkie much less relevant.
As a result, the imperative to keep Wilkie happy, lest he bring down the Government, has suddenly evaporated. And that has given Gillard the wriggle room she needs to craft a more clubs-friendly compromise on gaming machine reform. While the Prime Minister is staying silent on the progress of the negotiations with Wilkie, various newspaper reports indicate that the deal on the table is now a delayed introduction to mandatory pre-commitment, slipping out to 2016, and only after a "full trial" of the measures in a sample jurisdiction like the Australian Capital Territory.
The backsliding on mandatory pre-commitment may appease Labor backbenchers and factional power brokers. But whether this is good politics is open to question. Most opinion polls show that the public supports tighter gaming machine regulations, including mandatory pre-commitment. Nor are the big clubs themselves particularly popular, outside a few deep pockets of support in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Brisbane. Pressure groups like GetUp! are ramping up their anti-gaming campaigns, and veteran spin doctors Neil Lawrence and Sue Cato have also announced they are going to work on the anti-gaming cause.
The flip-flopping also gives Tony Abbott yet another opportunity to portray the Gillard Government as sneaky and untrustworthy, an opportunity he is seizing with his customary alacrity. It’s very easy to characterise the revised timetable for mandatory pre-commitment as simply another Gillard backdown, or indeed a double-cross. The Coalition is currently bitterly divided internally over subsidies for the car industry, so the Government would be wise to allow as much attention as possible be diverted from its own undertakings.
Nor is it clear that a compromise deal with Wilkie will persuade Clubs Australia to call off the attack dogs. Indeed, if the debate over the mining tax is any guide, the clubs lobby may instead take the current debate as a sign of weakness, and press on with the assault. Like so many political compromises, the eventual result may please nobody.
If the pokies backdown is poor politics, it’s terrible policy.
The devastating social impact of poker machine addiction is well understood. Clamping down on the rights of vulnerable people to gamble away their life savings and ruin their family’s finances may indeed be a restriction of their liberty. But it is surely a justifiable restriction. Mandatory pre-commitment has already been trialled in South Australia, in Queensland and in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia (the evidence is reviewed by the Productivity Commission here).
Mandatory pre-commitment is no silver bullet but all the trials showed a significant number of gamers used the pre-commitment schemes to monitor and limit their daily expenditure. The Canadian trials, in particular, showed a reduction in total expenditure by gamers after the introduction of the scheme. No wonder the big clubs are worried about a similar scheme in Australia.
The new year seems to have rung in a new political pragmatism from the Gillard government in a number of areas. Labor continues to try and put distance between itself and the Greens on key issues such as forestry and the Murray-Darling Basin. On the contentious issue of Tasmanian forestry, the Prime Minister and Greens leader Bob Brown are far from agreement, with Brown apparently suspending his regular meetings with Gillard until the issue can be resolved. A $276 million deal to try and end native forest logging in the island state was struck between the federal and Tasmanian Labor governments back in August, but despite this, Forestry Tasmania continues to log in native forests. Julia Gillard and Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings appear to have little appetite for enforcing the rules of their own deal in this regard. (Gillard denies that there was a breach, arguing that the exact location of logging coups was not specified in the agreement.)
Meanwhile, on water, the Government is playing politics with water allocation buy-backs in the Murray-Darling, ignoring the science and instead putting forward nonsensical proposals that will neither save the Murray-Darling, nor secure the long-term future of riverland irrigators. Scientists and environmentalists are finally mobilising to attack the new Murray-Darling Basin plan, which the influential Wentworth Group argues is the result of "manipulated science".
All in all, it’s a rather depressing beginning to 2012, especially for those who were hoping the Gillard Government would use the political momentum it built up in the later part of 2011 to implement evidence-based policy and burnish its rather threadbare progressive credentials.
In all of these issues, the choice is between the broader interests of the nation, and the narrow self-interest of industries and lobby groups that stand to lose out because of necessary reforms. By backsliding on these issues, Labor wins few votes in the marginal seats, but it hastens the disaffection of its already disappointed base.
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Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 1:18PM
The opponents of mandatory pre-commitment are clever in describing it as a “footy tax” (even if that’s a complete lie).
Firstly, the term refers to football which we’re all supposed to love (unless we’re unAustralian).
Secondly, use of the word ‘tax’ plays into people’s fears of new taxes - although Australia is lightly taxed compared with other major economies.
Thirdly, it uses infantile language (very Australian).
If Gillard genuinely wants to push for this reform or any other, she needs to go for the jugular - just as her enemies do. Otherwise, she will be seen as weak-kneed and vacilating.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 1:24PM
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!
Julia is an abject failure, a ditherer, a gambler. The Labor Party need to depose her and quickly to have any chance of winning the next election.
Stephen Smith is more credible!
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 2:34PM
Although I’m not usually one for conspiracy theories I can’t help but wonder if all this scuttlebutt about the ALP backing down from pokies was deliberately and misleadingly spread by anti-mandatory-commitment forces. It seems to have come from nowhere and been feeding itself on more frenzy than facts.
Surely the ALP can’t be stupid enough to think that backing down (a la ETS) is a good political move, even above and beyond the fact that it is good policy.
Have they really *still* learnt *nothing* about politics. Heaven help us all, it looks like Tony in 2013.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 3:18PM
But surely “the imperative to keep Andrew Wilkie happy, lest he bring down the Government” was not a good basis for public policy in this area either? Wilkie’s grandstanding has produced policy on the run, and unnecessary political polarisation on this issue, which has only strengthed the lobbying hand of Clubs Australia by allowing it to target NSW Labor MPs in marginal seats.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 4:54PM
I would take the clubs and hotel industries’ claims about freedom of choice and civil liberties a bit more seriously if they campaigned to decriminalise marijuana and amphetamines.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 6:17PM
David Grayling: “Stephen Smith is more credible!”
What on Earth have you been smoking?
Smith in TV interviews is all blab and blather and no substance whatever. Worse, he is as timid as they come. He would make Gillard look like a Labor reprise of Margaret Thatcher.
Tanya Plibersek would make a far better Labor choice: articulate, relaxed and straight forward in a manner that is totally beyond Smith. But I don’t think she wants the job.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 6:45PM
Voluntary pre-comintment > Choice?
I thought we already had choice on how much cash we toss at pretty machine industry local or pretty machine industry online.
jonwardle - Agreed. Is a farcical political system we have.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 7:42PM
O. Puhleez, Tanya would also be a good choice. Shorten and Combe lack both gravitas and appeal and Julia, well Julia has too much blood on her hands.
Of course, once the electorate realize that Phony Tony might be the next P.M., the whole paradigm might change.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 8:28PM
“Julia has too much blood on her hands.”
Gillard arguably has a heart, and it’s possibly in the right place. But she is a woeful strategist and a hopeless communicator. She had the opportunity to foresee from the polls before the last election that there could be a hung parliament, in which case she would have to do deals and compromise on policy. She could have foreshadowed that, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Elections are supposed to be about expression of the popular will.
Rudd while PM made far too many enemies within his own party. His control-freakery and micro-management were what did him in. Then he went to water on the climate issue. He made such a mess of it they had to hose him out of the kitchen.
Gillard IMHO looks set to lead the ALP to a wipeout of historic proportions.
And after that, the dark.
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 10:51PM
This is definitely an interesting and disappointing “development” towards pokies “reforms”. It demonstrates in a very ugly, nasty manner that politicising social issues is detrimental to our population - the people involved are not concerned with the specific issue, with helping victims of gambling addiction (both addict or the families connected), or with the social network/communities who bear the social/economic costs of this addiction.
They appear solely interested in playing their political games, boosting their egos, seeing if they can get away with robbing Peter to pay PAul, seeing if they can appease the important people who make profits out of others’ misery/weaknesses/misfortunes, keeping their seats of power blahblahblah.
I found this little tidbit in a book recently and thought that perhaps this is a tactic Abbott is also using:
“In 1988, Caddell was a polling expert for Alan Cranston, Democratic senator from California. Cranston was in a close race with Republican Ed Zschu. Caddell and colleagues studied surveys of California voters and discovered an intriguing bit of data: Voters were tiring of negative campaign ads and were ready to ignore the election altogether if the ads continued. This bit of data became the basis for devising a successful reelection strategy for Cranston. Cranston’s team decided to run negative ads to annoy people so much that they would become sickened by the very thought of politics. This would have the affect of reducing the voter turnout in the election. Lower turnout would help Cranston because as the incumbent senator he had higher name recognition than Zschu. It worked. Turnout dropped and Cranston edged out the lesser known Zschu.” From: Analzing politics by Ellen Grigsby pg 35-37.
Though Julia is doing a good job all on her own of making her public become sour in the mouth from her behaviour - so Tony doesn’t really have to do much - but he wins power if people are sick to death of all the bullshit, dispassion and double-crossing of our “leaders”. Although voting in not a choice in Oz like it is in USA, if people don’t vote for Julia or Abbott - I’d bet Abbott still gets in (no pun intended on the “bet” bit either!!).
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 8:45AM
It is looking like the one-time student activist tactically outsmarted the man who was trained at Duntroon. Chalk one up for the Victorian Socialist Left as a political training ground.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 12:47PM
Game changer to me. I thought Gillard could rescue her sinking reputation, but her pandering to the clubs is disgusting. Political expediency outweighs serious social issue yet again.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 1:02PM
If they made the pre-committment apply only to machines above $1, I reckon the average punter would see that as a reasonable compromise, and Gillard could force through a deal that would diffuse the worst of tensions without making too many enemies.
If she can’t sort this one out…. wow.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 1:30PM
When you make a reasonable deal, you stick to it.
This is a reasonable deal by all accounts
(excepting the profits of Big Gamble, and stuff them).
Prevarication is not attractive in a politician.
Why does the Government keep shooting own goals?!
Their right faction voters will just protest vote Liberal,
and their Left Faction will go to the Greens,
and probably never return. Faaaarq!
David Skidmore- hahaha! They should legalize and tax those drugs like tobacco. Same problems, same solutions.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 2:31PM
Julia could wedge Tony nicely now by putting the legislation in front of him and daring him to vote no.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 2:31PM
So, if the numbers aren’t there in the Reps just how is Labor supposed to get any pre-comittment legislation through? Only Wilkie would support it, so it will be knocked back. What else is Julia supposed to do other than try and get some legislation through that will appeal to the independents???
The Julia-haters are out in force again putting out their usual Lieberal Party talking points.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 2:35PM
dbmurray - yep, same for me - but it’s a scary thought having a wanker in a budgie smuggler as my PM!! Hmmm, what to do, what to do?
There’s a brilliant argument for some issues requiring a national referendum or even regional referendum, when we witness almost daily or weekly how poorly these politicians are making decisions (really - nondecisions) on our behalf. Politics proves it does not contribute to society’s well being when it operates this way. I wonder how much tax payers money gets spend on dealing with the problems caused by gambling - unemployment, marriage breakdowns, mental health funding, criminal justice system, policing, repercussions in the education system…I bet the REAL cost is massive to the tax payer. If they are not going to curb the profiteering off people’s problems or weaknesses - then tax the fuck out of them til they cover their true costs rather than passing it on to the tax payer and other social institutions out there.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 2:35PM
meski - julia could wedge tony nicely by pulling up on his speedos
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 2:41PM
rusty - I’m not a liberal and I’m not a Julia hater, Julia is not doing what she represented to us that she would do ie carbon tax or stuff like gambling, it seems she is just caving-in weakly to everyone and sometimes you need to make a stand. I won’t vote for her or the dickhead, so I’m kinda stuck for now, might put blinky bill on the next election slip, not sure yet. There needs to be some measure within our system for pulling up political parties when they make decisions that the public has strong objections to - we live in a REPRESENTATIVE democracy - who’representing me? None of these people.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 2:59PM
Pre committment would never stop problem gamblers—They could pre commit thousands of dollars and who would control that.
People like me who may gamble a couple of dollars once in a blue moon will be stopped from gambling
The better option would be the $1 option which would be so boring to play for a long time.
However a lot of older people enjoy a night out in pleasant venues with cheap food. Clubs do a good job for the community in keeping lots of people happy.
Julia is quite correct in being cautious and she has the most difficult job any Prime Minister has had—a hung parliament means you have to negotiate everything. Politics is the art of compromise and Julia is playing it extremely well.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 3:41PM
kerryL - I personally don’t find it acceptable for your many people to be kept happy when it is at the expense of other issues, when so many others LOSE for those people’s happiness. I don’t understand how you would be stopped from gambling. And yes politics is about compromise especially under the conditions of a hung parliament - but compromise which produces no outcomes with the issue under consideration is useless - I can’t compromise on a work outcome which actually produces no valuable outcome. I thought the research aleady supported the effectiveness of these measures? So by compromising in this instance you are just watering down how effective the outcome would be.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 11:39PM
Mannie De Saxe
It seems to me that Andrew Wilkie needs to stick to his original proposal and to not back down in any way.
Gillard is on a very slippery slope with her numbers in the parliament, and all she needs to happen is a change of heart by one of the other independents who support her at the moment or for a member of the ALP to become ill and have to leave parliament.
This does not give the government much security and with all the other backsliding Gillard and her government are perpetrating, her future does not look very bright.
Unfortunately the alternatives on offer are all very grim, and the next few years look dark indeed!
Posted Saturday, 21 January 12 at 10:47AM
Except for a couple of notable exceptions, such as Howard and Hawke, I would have to say that Gillard is the worst PM that Australia has ever had.
She believes in absolutely NOTHING except winning POWER and holding it. A woman so lacking in real intelligence, any moral fibre, ethics or intestinal fortitude will only take the Labor Party to a fast death.
I can not see how anyone with any brains could vote for The Mad Monk and his crew of desperados, but even if Gillard were rolled, who could possibly take her place? NOT Krudd! That man is a walking disaster anyway. I do not see anyone in the Labor Caucus who has what it takes to actually lead Australia. They are all rent seekers. All beholden to the Far Right Factions in NSW and Victoria.
As for Gillard getting training the Vict. Socialist Left, I would think that the apellation LEFT has not applied to that body for many years. It is just another Faction, with generally extreme Far Right views, and Gillard has certainly learned from THAT!
As some commentator said, Gillard is the Right Wing PM when you do not have the Lib/Nats in there. Labor in Australia is now so far Right Wing that it’s far away connections to Progressive Left policies is long forgotten. And derided! It has been a very long time now since Labor had any Progressive (Leftish) ideas.
Now, every Member is beholden to Right Wing Factions.
The Resources Rent tax was watered down to the point that it is utterly useless. In fact, it is like to cost more than it takes in. Gillard.
The Carbon tax was watered down to the point where it is utterly useless. In fact, now, payments to Polluters is likely to cost more than the tax gets in. Taxpayers pay. Gillard. It goes on and on. She has done absolutely nothing to advance Australia, other than what has been forced on her by the Greens and Independents.
The Forests Agreement in Tasmania is a total disaster, again because Gillard will not upset her far right backers.
The Coal Seam Gas Industry, backed by Gillard and Ferguson, is going to totally destroy Australia within about 20 years, after that there will be nothing left, certainly not drinkable water or arable land. And NO Gas!
Coal mining and exports, backed by Gillard and Ferguson, will send more carbon gas into the atmosphere, about 20 times more, than all of Gillard’s weak moves to curtail it. Yet all they wants to do is destroy fish habitats and coastal wetlands to build more Coal loading facilities. The Great Barrier Reef will be destroyed.
Some people try to find some slight thing that she has done right. Hopeless task. There is NOTHING!
This aborted Pokies Reform is just the latest gutless display on her behalf. Also, bloody DUMB! Dazza.
Posted Saturday, 21 January 12 at 11:20AM
Dazza - yep I tend to agree with your comments - you can’t buckle and give in every time an idea is challenged, and to do so under the influence of factions, peer pressure and merely a desire to hold power is very disappointing. Realistically, compromise is definitely part of politics, I spose it has to be with so many different views, interests etc to take into consideration - but the nation is probably waiting and hoping to see a prime minister who doesn’t behave this way and water every good move down so weak that it is useless - a person who stands up and fights for social issues rather than a minority’s economic interests…I think that that person might get into power even if briefly.
Our whole system needs an overhaul - a 2 party system where both parties basically repersent the same values and interests is not really a 2 party system is it?
Posted Saturday, 21 January 12 at 11:55AM
Dazza, I too agree with your comments about Julia above.
Australia has become like the U.S., a place where two parties (Dumb and Dumber) are hard to tell apart and corporate pressure and money control the politicians who operate out of self-interest in the main.
Of course, unlike the U.S., Australia is not trying to control the world, not yet anyway. And you forgot to mention that Julia gave Australia to the U.S., unilaterally, when she let them have a military base in Darwin, another of her huge mistakes.
Eventually, Australia will end up becoming the same as the U.S., that is run by religious fanatics, extreme nationalists, and avaricious corporations if we don’t watch out.
Some might say it already is!
Dangerous Creation
Posted Saturday, 21 January 12 at 12:43PM
David, I made comment on the give-away of Australian sovereignty to the USA on a NM article late last year. As I also noted, I am waiting with bated breath for the announcement from Martin Ferguson/Gillard that he/she has given the Yanks access to Muckaty Station in the NT for their Uranium/Radioactive waste. They have been pressuring us for years, after they had to shut down their proposed waste storage facility (Yucatan Mountain) from NIMBY activities.
I note yesterday a report that the US Armed forces have been accused of increased sexual attacks on females in areas of operations. I still say that the US Marines will prove very bad occupiers of Darwin. They are mostly scum.
As for Corporations, BHP and others have already proved that they control the agenda of the Gillard Government. Dazza.
Posted Sunday, 22 January 12 at 12:04PM
I’m with El Tel, the entire basis for this pokie reform hung on a badly gained, but desperately needed vote for Labor to retain power in the lower House.
The truth is, take away the ATMs from bars and clubs (and since you can still purchase food and drink with your cards) the problem would be mostly solved.
Enforced pre-commitment!
And also to reinforce this ‘precommitment’, only legalise the $1 machines.
Posted Sunday, 22 January 12 at 5:10PM
@nicwalmsley
I understood that mandatory pre-commitment was only proposed to apply to machines above $1, so-called “higher intensity machines”. To quote the government: “machines configured to lower intensity play would not need to have pre-commitment technology”. See http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wOT-ZI8bKkcJ:www.pr…
Posted Monday, 23 January 12 at 12:01PM
It’s not very important in the scheme of things, but terribly discouraging. We are currently stuck in an unsustainable system of ecological overexploitation. We can move out this, but we have to move faster and change more rapidly than any society as ever done before.
If we find even the minutest little social change, like pokie reform, is so difficult, how are we going to make the really big changes that will enable us to make the transformation?
Posted Monday, 23 January 12 at 3:44PM
“We are currently stuck in an unsustainable system of ecological overexploitation,’ says calyp!
It’s not only ecological exploitation, it’s also financial exploitation, military exploitation, political exploitation, social exploitation, the list goes on and on!
Hands up all those who aren’t being exploited!
Those who didn’t put up their hands can’t because they are busily engaged in rifling through someone else’s wallet, panties, bank account, credit card details, voting details, etc!
99% of us are being exploited continuously. Those who aren’t live in luxury close to Malcolm Turnbull or in a mansion on the foreshores of Sydney Harbor!
Dangerous Creation.
Posted Monday, 23 January 12 at 4:14PM
Would somebody please explain to me:
-What the pros and cons of the pre-commitment legislation,
and the $1 max bet legislation proposals are?
-How can it be possible that the PM didn’t have the numbers
to get the proposal through Parliament?
If the ALP+ GRN+ Independents want it,
then they had a 2 seat (now 1 seat) majority
for passing legislation- where’s their disability?
Fightmumma- binary thinking is the trick where political Parties
(or consumer/religious/etc Duopolies) use a subtle combination
of emotive tricks to make the public think that their 2 options
are the only real choices- so restrict your votes (money/belief/etc) to A or B.
Posted Monday, 23 January 12 at 5:26PM
olivier - like you are really throwing a dice but they want you thinking you’re tossing a coin?
Posted Monday, 23 January 12 at 5:44PM
Sadly, there has been very little discussion of policy in this whole debate about pokies reforms. The media has been as, or even more, hypocritical than the government.
http://thepoliticsproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/gillards-credibility-…
Posted Tuesday, 24 January 12 at 12:26AM
@Olivier
I think Tony Windsor was against it, only prepared to support any change if it was trialled somewhere else first. http://www.smh.com.au/national/windsor-comes-to-pms-defence-on-pokies-20…
And the other Tony, the Crook from the WA Nats, was only just “having a look at it” when Wilkie called this week, having apparently not been lobbied at all by the Government. Not promising.
Ditto the Mad Katter. http://www.smh.com.au/national/katter-may-scuttle-pokies-reform-20110612…
Ditto Rob Oakeshott. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-20/oakeshott-won27t-gamble-on-pokies-…
So it’s hard not to agree with Ms Gillard that she didn’t have the numbers for Wilkie’s bill, and if Wilkie thinks she is wrong, why is he not putting up the bill himself and seeing if he can get it past?
As for the pros and cons, the pro of banning all machines except $1 ones are that it would take a day to lose $1000 as against an hour for the most expensive spins, so most problem gambling will be fixed by sheer exhaustion, and at little inconvenience to non-problem-gamblers since 86% of all pokies players use only $1 machines (“low-intensity”). The con is that most club revenue comes from “high-intensity” machines, and the clubs have a lot of money invested in them which it may not be able to recoup by selling them off overseas (they are illegal almost everywhere).
This gets you to the pre-commitment proposal, which lets the clubs keep their major money-spinners but stops problem-gamblers exceeding their pre-set limit (and hopefully they will have set an affordable limit). The 86% who use only $1 machines are not affected (and the clubs have no refitting costs for these machines). On the other hand they have considerable refitting costs for high-intensity machines (some wild claims have suggested enough to bankrupt smaller clubs) and there will be some loss of revenue from non-problem-gamblers put off by the whole exercise (and of course from problem gamblers properly deterred from losing their houses etc, but that’s the dirty little secret of club revenue they don’t want to talk about).
Posted Tuesday, 24 January 12 at 1:30PM
thanks aussiegreg - interesting
Posted Friday, 27 January 12 at 12:05PM
Thanks for the clarification fightmumma and aussiegreg.