The Advertiser reports:
THE Independent Gambling Authority wants to ban newsagents and other retail outlets from selling Keno tickets.
It has proposed a five-year phase-out, after which South Australians would only be able to play Keno at licensed gaming venues.
The move would affect hundreds of small businesses, who claim they stand to lose more than $65 million a year in turnover.
Newsagents are trusted to sell pornographic material, tobacco products, scratch tickets and regular lottery products under strict age based rules so why not keno. I suspect that newsagents and other small businesses have been outgunned by the richer clubs and small lobby groups.
Business for newsagents is finely balanced. They need keno traffic to support newspaper, magazine, card and stationery sales just as they need newspaper sales to support lottery, magazine and card sales … and so on. This proposed move to strip keno from newsagents who have a significant knock on effect as The Advertiser rightly points out.
My question would be: newsagents in South Australia have had keno for years, what harm has come from that which requires it to be taken from the and if there is harm has it cost hundreds of millions of dollars in a year?