Gambling Harm in the Northern Territory - An Atlas of Venue Catchments

This report was prepared for the Community Benefit Committee, Department of Business, Northern Territory Government in May 2014. Authored by Dr Martin Young, Dr Bruce Doran and Francis Markham. The Productivity Commission (1999) brought the issue of problem gambling to national attention with its release of the first comprehensive report on Australias gambling industries. The commission estimated problem gamblers, those people who have trouble controlling their gambling, comprise 2.1% of the adult population. More recently, the commission (2010) estimated the social costs of problem gambling, including suicide, depression, relationship breakdown, lowered work productivity, job loss, bankruptcy and crime, to be over $4.7 billion per year. This atlas presents a series of maps that describe a number of pokie venues in the NT, the spatial distribution of their clientele, and their associated level of problem gambling. The aim of the atlas is to provide an explicitly visual document that communicates information in an easy-to-interpret format.