Investors’ poll shows Tassies are against pokies …

Small Giants, the investment group behind the new Hobart development, The Commons, has released new polling data showing that the vast majority of Tasmanians agree that pokies are addictive, and the benefits mostly flow to the companies that own hotels, clubs and pubs.

Only 9.5% of Tasmanians, according to the poll, believe the community benefits most from keeping pokies; whereas 41.4% say that the monopolistic Federal Hotels Group gets the most benefit, followed by the 27.9% who say that hotels, pubs and clubs get the most benefit. 68.5% of Tasmanians believe that pokies are designed to get people addicted, and fewer than 13% of Tasmanians believe that pokies in hotels, pubs and clubs have a positive impact on the community.

Small Giants CEO, Danny Almagor said, “As investors, we know that businesses do best when they’re part of healthy communities. Pokies ruin individuals, families and societies, and that’s why we want these addictive machines out of Tasmanian pubs.”

Small Giants’ funds management company, Impact Investment Group, has today bought the Beach Hotel in Byron Bay, where they’re removing the pokies as part of a program of positive environmental and social impact works.

The survey of 925 Tasmanian voters was conducted via an automated telephone based survey system by ReachTel on 14 February 2018. Impact Investment Group, commissioned the poll. The new data is below. This polling data expands on an article published in Monday’s The Mercury, which said that a majority of Tasmanians preferred the Labor Party’s plan to restrict pokies to casinos by 2023, over the Liberal policy.

However, the article also said that pokies policy was a vote changer for only 14.3% of the statewide vote, trailing health, jobs and the economy as the primary concern.
Small Giants CEO, Danny Almagor