The number of gambling harm incident reports made to the ACT's industry regulator has doubled in two years, a parliamentary hearing has been told.
Staff managing the territory's poker machines made more than 70,000 reports of gambling harm incidents in the past financial year, the highest figure in the past five years.
In 2025-26, there were 72,647 gambling harm incidents reported to the regulator, an increase of 53.5 per cent from 47,337 in 2024-25 and more than double the number of reports made in 2023-24 of 32,095.
Officials from the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission fronted an ACT budget estimates hearing on Monday, July 27.
Commission chief executive Giuseppe Mangeruca said money seeking, where customers make multiple cash withdrawals, and playing at high intensity, which can include gambling for long periods without a break and spending more than $300 in a session, made up the "vast majority" of incident reports.
"Reporting is on the rise... which is not a bad thing," Mr Mangeruca said.
"There is not one particular thing that anyone should be looking for ... in the circumstances, does it appear that that person is suffering from gambling harm, and that is something we would suggest is reported in the register."
ACT venues operating poker machines are required to report incidents where a customer shows signs of having a gambling problem.
In 2025-26, there were 376 self-exclusions reported, an increase on 295 in the previous financial year.
Canberra Liberals leader Mark Parton asked officials whether the number of incident reports was equivalent to the number of individual people experiencing gambling harm, and for the number of actual individuals represented in the reporting figures.
"Anything that gets reported in those incident registers is a good thing," Mr Mangeruca said.
"There may be incidents which correlate to one of the indicators of gambling harm, where in isolation might actually not mean that that person has a problem gambling incident. But a failure to report incidents means that... you might not be actually picking up someone that truly is.
"Some venues have gotten very good at reporting and we would say that that is a good thing, because it allows us to pick up those things, and yes, there are multiple people that are picked up within those group of incidents."
Later on Monday, Minister for Gambling Reform Marisa Patterson said she viewed the increase in reports as a result of her advocacy for uptake of the gambling incident register.
"This was very much on the agenda for me as minister to see [licensed venues] reporting improve, because what we were seeing previously was one particular club that was producing most of the reporting and most of the other clubs not producing any," she said.
"I'm very happy to see the reporting potentially reflect a more accurate picture of where clubs are seeing harm and seeing incidents on gaming floors."
Independent Thomas Emerson had earlier asked the commission members whether they considered practices like the provision of free meals and free drinks an inducement to entice vulnerable people to spend more.
"What the research tells us is that, it's important to have breaks, and the longer that someone gambles, the more likely they are to suffer from gambling harm," Mr Mangeruca said.
"Anything that would result in a break in play, I think is a good thing, however, how that's achieved and whether there are incentives that are given by a gaming machine licensees within that context ... I don't wanna go as far as to say it is an inducement."
Mr Mangeruca reiterated the results of a 2024 ACT survey that found fewer people were gambling, but there was an "intensification of harm" amongst a smaller group.
The Canberra Times reported in 2025 that while the number of poker machines in the ACT had dropped, gaming revenue in the territory had increased.
