Adjudication No. 1315  (adjudicated May 2006)

The Australian Press Council has upheld a complaint from the Noble Park Football Social Club that the Springvale Dandenong Leader misrepresented the club's position, in an article about a state government review of club expenditure from poker machine revenue.

The report, under a headline Pokie venues face tax probe, suggested that some of the "taxation" claims made by clubs in the Greater Dandenong area could be questioned in view of the government's expressed concern that there were "possible discrepancies" in the operation of the Victorian government's community benefits scheme.

The club complained that the article was inaccurate in implying that the club itself was facing a tax probe; that it unfairly questioned the legitimacy of the club's claims that, the club said, were within government guidelines; and that, in any case, the club did not stand to gain benefits from such claims.

The article went to some lengths, by judicious use of words, to establish that only those clubs which had been "overstepping the mark" with their claims need be worried by the review. However the article highlighted what it termed "unusual" claims by some clubs, such as those for plasma televisions and smoking rooms. By inviting Noble Park to be quoted defending exactly that expenditure, the newspaper largely undid its attempt to be non-specific as to which clubs, it thought, might be suspect in the government's review.

In reports of this nature it is unfortunate that, amid controversies, often those who dutifully respond to media inquiries inadvertently attract suspicion to themselves. This certainly appears to be the case with the Noble Park Football Social Club.

It is the Council's view that the review of government policy was deserving of wide community debate and the Leader's canvassing of what constitutes a community benefit was reasonable. However the paper's explanation of how revenue from poker machines is distributed is wrong. It should not have been. And the use of the word "tax" is wrong in the headline and the body of the report.

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