Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group fined after kids entered pokies lounges at Melbourne’s Excelsior Hotel, Mountain View Hotel and Cramers Hotel

An exasperated Magistrate said “this will happen again”, after kids as young as 14 were found in pokies lounges.

Pokies giant Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group has been ordered to pay $78,000 in fines and legal fees after allowing children into the gaming areas at three of its venues in Melbourne’s northern and eastern suburbs.

The company, which has a long record of breaching Victoria’s strict pokies laws, dobbed itself in to the regulator, the Victorian Gaming and Casino Control Commission and later pleaded guilty to six charges.

Defence barrister Glenn Barr, told the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday the company did not want to enter into a good behaviour bond because the risk of breaching it would be “too high”.

When asked by the magistrate whether “this will happen again”, Mr Barr said, “there is a risk of it occurring”.

Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group has been fined, again, for breaching Victorian child gaming laws. (File photo)

Mr Barr said his client had done “all it can thus far” to prevent more children entering the gambling lounges at the more than 80 venues it operates in Victoria.

But the company had determined the cost of having staff stationed on the door of all its pokies lounges was too high.

The venues that fell afoul of the law were the Excelsior Hotel in Thomastown, the Mountain View Hotel in Glen Waverley and the Cramers Hotel in Preston.

In once case, a child remained inside a pokies lounge for more than an hour a group of adults surrounded him to stop being detected when he walked in.

In another, the child who entered the pokies lounge was 14 years old.

The magistrate was scathing of lax policing and soft penalties imposed on pokies operators by the regulators and courts.

The Victorian pokies regulator, the VGCCC, has prosecuted more than a dozen venues recently after children were found in pokies lounges.

The court heard no company has ever had its pokies license revoked for allowing a child to gamble, and that operators who self report — as required under the conditions of their license — are nearly always spared convictions.

“It seems to be as part of the course, that cases all come into the court as a self-report … and then the companies come to the court stating that this is part of operating a large business,” the magistrate said.

“It seems regrettable that this is the way the act is administered.”

The pokies giant sacked two employees who failed to check one of the children for ID, and placed a manager on a “final warning”.

The company is also experimenting with artificial intelligence security cameras which estimate a person’s age.

Of the $78,000 the company was ordered to pay, $38,000 were fines and $40,000 were legal costs incurred by the regulator.

The company’s record includes being fined $177,500 last year for allowing a minor to gamble 24 times at five of its venues, and allowing an eight-year-old to enter a pokies lounge without an adult.

The company’s largest shareholders are members of the billionaire Mathieson-Grollo family.