Alice Springs is facing a new flashpoint over poker machines, with a community‑led challenge failing to stop more pokies being added to two major hotels owned by a national hospitality group. The case centres on how boosting machine numbers from 10 to 20 at each venue is meant to support tourism and local business but seems likely to deepen harm among low‑income and largely Indigenous gamblers who already lose more to pokies than almost any other group in the world.
The dispute began after the Northern Territory’s Director of Gaming Machines approved an application in mid‑2023 to lift the poker machine count at the Gap View Hotel and Todd Tavern, both controlled by a large Sydney‑based operator. A local coalition of Indigenous leaders, health organisations and a community advocacy group argued that most gamblers at these pubs are vulnerable Indigenous residents and that extra machines would worsen already visible social problems including financial stress, family hardship and community disruption.
Under the approval, each of the two hotels went from 10 to 20 machines, while the same operator had also sought to install 40 pokies across two additional Alice Springs venues with no existing machines. That second plan was pulled back when the territory government introduced an overall cap on poker machines. Even with that cap, the broader numbers tell a different story. Three local clubs have surrendered licences since 2017, taking 74 machines out of circulation, yet casino rules and hotel acquisitions have helped push the town’s total up by around 100 machines in only a few years.
The recent tribunal hearings, held over three days in Darwin, ultimately upheld the regulator’s original decision to allow more machines at the two pubs. The panel acknowledged that several local clubs had given up licences, which had reduced machine numbers in the past, but it also noted that casinos in the territory still face no fixed cap on pokies. Investigations have shown that one Alice Springs casino alone has added more than 150 machines and now holds the vast majority of the town’s 570 pokies, with the same operator controlling roughly 460 of them across its casino and hotels.
Public health experts and gambling‑harm specialists view this concentration as a structural risk rather than a simple business choice. Australians already lose more money to gambling per person than any other country and people in the Northern Territory sit at the top of that list, gambling away about $2130 per adult each year, mostly through poker machines. On‑the‑ground reporting in Alice Springs suggests that many of the people feeding these machines are Indigenous residents, some of whom are homeless or on very low incomes, yet evidence presented to the tribunal from the operator’s local management claimed only one problem gambler had been formally identified at one of the pubs in the previous year.
One key flashpoint during the appeal was a request to use historical CCTV footage from the hotels to better understand who is actually using the machines. The community group wanted footage from a specific week in January 2025 to support its claim that most patrons on the pokies are Indigenous and at high risk of harm. The tribunal rejected that approach, saying it did not want to infer racial identity from images and arguing that a single week of footage would only show a moment in time, not a full year’s pattern of use. Some gambling‑harm experts see that decision as a missed chance to resolve factual disagreements about who is most affected.
In the bigger picture, the outcome looks likely to entrench a model where a single corporate operator controls most poker machines in Alice Springs while casinos enjoy more generous rules than pubs and clubs despite evidence of widespread harm among disadvantaged gamblers. The case seems to highlight a wider policy tension in the Northern Territory. Regulators and tribunals are formally acknowledging community concerns but current laws and caps still allow the overall number of machines and the intensity of gambling to keep rising. Advocates say this decision underlines the need for tougher protections, more transparent data and reforms that do not leave the heaviest costs on the people with the least ability to absorb them.
