Manningham council in Melbourne's far east has bought the local RSL club to keep it free of poker machines and then launched a campaign to encourage 30 more municipalities to follow suit.
Mr Twinning, who was formerly the club's treasurer for 10 years, came up with the idea after seeing the perilous state of the venue's finances. The 200-member Templestowe RSL is run by trustees, but in the event of financial failure, ownership would revert to the organisation's Victorian branch."If the state branch got a hold of the place, they might fill it all up and put pokies in it. I'm vehemently opposed to that," Mr Twinning said.
“[We] were well aware of RSL Victoria’s record over the past decade of promoting the pokies industry and even selling off failed venues to developers and distributing the proceeds of sales to prop up other RSL pokies venues, rather than better supporting traditional RSLs." The move was also strategic for the council as the site was the only privately owned piece of land at Templestowe Village.