The national head of the Returned and Services League of Australia has backed a push to stop licensed clubs from using the RSL letters in their names amid internal division over whether poker machines should be phased out of the venues altogether.
The RSL president, Greg Melick, said the veterans’ charity was concerned its name was being used by “organisations that don’t share our values” and that licensed clubs should have to ask for permission before using it.
Melick threw his support behind the New South Wales RSL branch president, Mick Bainbridge, who called for gambling clubs to stop using the RSL name because he said it was creating confusion between the charity and pokies venues.
“We agree with the approach [Bainbridge] is taking in NSW. We own the name, they don’t,” Melick told Guardian Australia on Friday.
“We are concerned the name is being used by clubs turning over hundreds of millions of dollars in gambling revenue without money going to veterans’ welfare. It’s horrible, actually.”
The RSL charity separated from clubs when NSW’s liquor laws were reformed in the 1970s. The clubs and the not-for-profit RSL remained closely affiliated.
Bainbridge this week said gambling had become a significant part of the clubs’ business and had damaged some local communities, veterans and their families.
The RSL is wrestling internally with the issue of poker machines and whether they should be allowed in RSL clubs at all.
Clubs and hotels in NSW made a record $4.1bn in profits from the pokies in the first half of 2024, according to NSW Liquor and Gaming data.
Venues were operating an extra 577 gaming machines in June compared to the previous year, taking NSW’s total to 87,875 – the highest number in action since the end of 2020.
Victorian clubs and hotels operated fewer than one-third as many machines, at just over 26,000. The state has a strict cap of 30,000 poker machines, including about 2,600 allowed at Melbourne’s Crown casino.
The Victorian RSL has faced pushback from younger veterans campaigning against pokies.
The Victorian president, Dr Robert Webster, declined to comment other than to say: “We don’t have separate RSL clubs in Victoria, they are sub-branches.”
The president of the Hawthorn RSL sub-branch, Drew Maddison, said poker machines were “not welcome in the RSL anymore” and his venue decided not to have any when it reopened in 2019.
Maddison said 52 of Victoria’s 257 RSL venues had poker machines.
“They divide our RSL network, in the sense that the 52 that do have pokies pretty much run the RSL network,” he said.
“It’s a very small percentage of pokie money, if any, that goes back to supporting veterans’ welfare.”
The NSW RSL has raised concerns about the distribution of funds under the state’s ClubGrants scheme, which requires that venues with profits over $1m support local community services.
Just $1.7m, or 1.4% of the $121m distributed by clubs – including RSL clubs – in 2023 was allocated to support veterans, according to the NSW RSL’s analysis.
The division over allowing gambling in RSL clubs coincides with debate over the future of the pokies in NSW, where the Minns government is trialling cashless gaming.
The research trial is Labor’s alternative to the previous Coalition government’s vow to force all poker machines to become cashless by 2028.
Last week, the NSW gaming minister, David Harris, admitted that half the venues that signed up for the government’s cashless gaming trial run had pulled out because they found it too expensive or complicated to implement the necessary technology.
Harris told a budget estimates hearing that only 14 pubs and clubs were still participating, down from the 27 that signed on when the government announced the trial at the end of 2023.
The number of poker machines involved in the trial had fallen to2,388 machines, and only 32 gamblers were still participating.
Harris insisted the researchers were still getting enough data.
