The Elwick is owned by Vantage Hotels, a subsidiary of the Sydney-owned Federal Group that has held the exclusive rights to poker machines in Tasmania since they were introduced. Average household income in Glenorchy is less than $1,100 a week. What isn’t subjective is that, from the owners’ perspective, the Elwick is easily Tasmania’s most lucrative pokies pub – what independent federal MP and anti-pokies campaigner Andrew Wilkie calls “ground zero for poker machines” in the state.Īccording to unreleased government data leaked to Wilkie, gamblers lost nearly $4.5m on the Elwick’s gaming machines in 2015-16 – an average of more than $400 per machine per day. This is, of course, an anecdotal and unscientific observation, based on just one hour out of the 140 the venue is open each week. The punters may have been enjoying themselves but, if so, there was no outward expression of it. There was no chatter the brief conversations witnessed were between bar staff and the handful of patrons who bought a drink. With one exception, those in the gaming room arrived and sat alone, mostly with an unused machine between each player. On a recent Saturday night, over the course of an hour, Guardian Australia saw three people at the Elwick’s front bar and 17 playing the hotel’s 30 poker machines.
