CEO’S REPORT

Welcome to 2023 and a new year of activity within your Clubs and our Community.

Our staff did another terrific job again over the very busy Christmas and New Year season. “Teamwork makes the dream work” as the saying goes and we remain thankful to them all for their service, diligence and commitment to you, our valued Members and Visitors.

Renovations were completed at Workers Blacktown, and we have begun experiencing strong levels of Members and visitors who are enjoying the Club and the newest offering, Blue Gum Café. Group Wide, visitation is increasing again and pleasingly we see our total number of Club Members pushing through 54,000.

Seasonal menus have commenced, and our range of meals, healthy choices, traditional Club favourites and new offers will adapt to new seasonal flavours, albeit along with a modest price increase for Members and Visitors reflecting the CPI, fuel levies and supplier price increases being passed onto the Club.

In January, Douglas Kirkham joined our Executive Management team reporting to me, with the mandate of serving our Team and Members as our Chief Operating Officer. Our Club group will benefit from his focus, humility and attention to the group wide operations of our Clubs, as he is a deeply experienced Club Manager. Welcome to the team Douglas.

Focus is now shifting over to Workers Sports and the Parkside Lifestyle Community Independent Living Unit Retirement Village development. Exploratory groundworks have commenced ahead of construction commencing in June 2023. Ahead of that commencement, a sales display suite is being constructed in Campbell Street. The suite is due to open in May to assist our future residents in their real estate journey.

We have lodged a development application relative to the front area of Workers Hubertus seeking to take advantage of the significant increases in traffic arising from the construction of the Nancy-Bird Walton Western Sydney Aerotropolis, to construct and operate a fuel service station incorporating a truck stop and amenities such as fast food outlets.

Our strategic goal is always to diversify and grow non-gaming related revenue streams. We will continue to provide new and valued services and products to our current and future members, and to proactively grow our financial position through pragmatic asset management.

Our end of financial year is upon us and Members should be well assured that your Clubs are in very good hands with an unaudited Operating Surplus of circa $4.4M. We have Cash and Equivalents of $15.5M and Net Assets exceeding $133M, which is strong position to be in.

Last year the Club invested circa $3M within our Community through the ClubGRANTS scheme and it is our pleasure to support a continued investment in local sport. We proudly support our community as we have done since 1955. We are good corporate citizens, who pay in excess of $12M in gaming taxes this year, as well as our many other obligations such as superannuation, payroll taxes, GST for example.

Gaming machines are our (along with the majority of the Club Industry) primary revenue source and is for the vast majority of our Members who play the pokies, a social or entertainment experience. We also accept that this is not the case for a very small percentage of Members and Visitors who may have a gambling problem. We are proactive and seek to identify and provide a gateway to resourceful and supportive experts to assist those Members wherever and whenever possible.

I take this opportunity to highlight to you some of the tools and actions already in place across the Workers Lifestyle Group of Clubs:

1. The BetSafe Responsible Gambling Program provides a responsible gaming framework, venue, and multi-venue self-exclusions, third party/involuntary exclusions, online exclusion registers, ongoing staff training and free counselling service for patrons. The BetSafe program also includes mandatory compliance reporting and site audits, along with compliance for Anti-Money Laundering/Counter Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF), Electronic Gaming Machines, Keno and TAB services.

2. Voluntary Pre-Commitment (VPC) gives our members the ability to limit all or any of their time spent, turnover generated, or cash spent on an electronic gaming machine, and has been in place in all our venues since 2013 via the IGT Gaming System.

3. Third Party Exclusions and Involuntary Exclusions are already permissible through our Club Constitution and determined externally through BetSafe. An individual can be referred to BetSafe by the Club or Family for example, who then work to provide support and strategies to attempt to get the individual to act voluntarily. Failing this, BetSafe will enact a third-party exclusion, effected by the Club.

4. Advanced Responsible Gambling Training has been provided to the Club’s staff voluntarily for the past 2 years. This training provides a higher level of training to staff in identifying patrons showing indications of problematic gambling and empowers staff to have proactive discussions with patrons to assist in minimising harm caused by gambling.

5. Circle Scan is an electronic entry mechanism compliant to the requirements of the Registered Clubs Act which identifies patrons at the entry to our clubs who have self-excluded (from our venue/s or another venues). They can be detected at the front door, denied entry and provided a referral to BetSafe. These detections are made possible through a central database of self-excluded patrons, which is provided by BetSafe.

6. Card Based Gaming has been introduced into all our Clubs through the IGT gaming system. This system sees patrons utilise a Member or Visitor card collecting gaming machine winnings within our venues and records their information accordingly.

7. Workers Clubs have commenced the rollout of Facial Recognition technology. Once approved and activated, we anticipate that Facial Recognition will enhance our patron’s safety, security and harm minimisation measures. This technology allows us to use any image supplied to us under the Self Exclusion and Multi Venue Self Exclusion Programs to uphold our current legal obligation to detect and ensure that any self-excluded patron does not enter our venues. The existing temporary Member entry system currently does this manually when a visitor signs into Club and we scan the supplied photo ID.

We believe that we are responsible operators of lawful products such as gaming and liquor. We provide assistance to those in need where we can. We don’t claim to be perfect, nor are we naive to think that we can identify every person who has a gambling problem. But we are sincere, resourceful, proactive and committed to putting our members and visitors interests first and foremost. We are proud community members and corporate citizens. We will never put profit before people.

Finally, we are keeping a watching brief on the NSW political landscape, and collectively Clubs advocate for change to take place in consultation with us, not directed to us, as we do support a journey to a cashless gaming environment, but as an alternative to, not a replacement of using cash in our community.

Lastly, as always I pass on my condolences to those Members who have lost loved ones. Please take care of yourself and of each other. Your Club will be here to support you as best we can together, now and into the future.

I look forward to seeing you around our Clubs.

Sincerely,

Morgan Stewart Chief Executive Officer Workers Lifestyle Group