Survey says ‘no’ to pokies

CRANBOURNE residents are firmly against more gaming machines.
Mayfield Ward Kevin Bradford said results from a recent survey mailed to 6000 homes revealed a clear disdain for pokies.
The 10question survey was designed to gauge the community’s views on gaming machines after ongoing debate within the council on the increasing number of machines in Casey. Cr Bradford said he had already received 650 responses since distributing the survey last week and that the consensus so far was that pokies were having a detrimental effect.
“The majority of people are saying that they know of a gambling addict and believe that there are too many machines in Cranbourne,” he said.
“They feel that pokies are no good for the Cranbourne economy, that the government is not doing enough to assist problem gamblers and that gaming machines should not be installed on council owned land,” he said.
Cr Bradford said he was pleased with the swift response and encouraged residents to continue to submit the surveys.
“As a councillor it is hard to gauge a total community opinion about a topic such as pokies so this is a way of consulting with the community as a whole in a confidential and anonymous way. We can gather information straight from the horse’s mouth.
“Hopefully, this will give me some good ammunition to prevent the introduction of more pokies in Cranbourne,” he said.