THE SS & A Club is labouring under debt from Victorian poker machine licences it can’t afford to use.
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And it is struggling to offload the licences because other clubs and pubs in the state are in the same position.
The Albury-based club faces a debt of $500,000 for 40 licences it bought at an auction in 2010.
It had intended to use them at its Wodonga golf club but can no longer afford to do so.
SS & A Club chief executive officer Tim Levesque said the club wasn’t under immediate threat, but it wanted to offload the licences as quickly as possible.
“We are paying for them at the moment,” he said.
“But if we don’t use them by a certain period, we lose the entitlements but still continue to pay for them.
“We are in consultation with the government to try and stop paying for them.
“We could give them back tomorrow without a problem at all.
“But you’ve still got to keep paying that fee.”
In the past 12 months, clubs and pubs across the state have handed back 107 entitlements to the Victorian government.
The SS & A Club is in the firing line to surrender its 40 licences under a “use it or lose it” clause.
The government said it needed revenue from the pokie licences to bankroll community infrastructure including hospitals, schools and roads.
Mr Levesque acknowledged the club’s contractual obligations, but said the burden was hurting the business.
Last November, the Victorian government granted the club a 12-month exemption from having to put the licences to use.
“We’ve got till November this year to make a decision on what to do,” Mr Levesque said.
“We are trying to get the government to take the machines back and not ask for us to pay for them.”
To use the licences, the SS & A Club would be required to pay an average of $23,000 per poker machine, and an additional fee to hook into the government’s monitoring system.
“Realistically, we don’t want to do it,” Mr Levesque said.
“If we have to pay half-a-million dollars for machines we are never going to use, it puts another financial burden on Wodonga golf course.
“We are getting somewhere now, but if we have to pay $500,000 for no return on investment it puts it back another three to five years.”
