The other staff member described how staff gave free alcohol to gamblers as a deliberate tactic to have them lose more money in pokie machines, though the woman nicknamed Queen Bee did not drink.

“You’d never obviously get someone intoxicated, you’ve got to use the [Responsible Service of Alcohol guidelines]. But we would give people drinks to make them happy, tipsy and they will stay on the machines. They’re going to spend probably a lot more money than when they were sober,” the staff member said.

Mr Wilkie said he was appalled that ALH staff would target someone so vulnerable to extract pokie profits. "I find that especially predatory."

He said the new whistle blowers had confirmed earlier allegations that this practice was standard practice across ALH venues, and said his office had now received reports from concerned ALH staff in the Northern Territory, Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, though his staff had not yet investigated all the reports.

He said new allegations about using alcohol to encourage gambling were particularly concerning. "This is not mind games anymore, this is almost like a physical assault to keep people in their venues.''

He again called on Woolworths to divest itself of pokie machines, and for regulators in all jurisdictions where ALH operates to investigate.

One of the two women said she had worked at four ALH hotels and done shifts at others, and both said it was standard practice for staff to be instructed to keep personal records about the habits of profitable pokies players and to target players like Queen Bee.

Last month Fairfax Media revealed how staff kept such material stored on a Google drive that could be accessed by pubs throughout the ALH chain. LH hotels and filled in occasionally at others, and at each staff were required to keep records about the habits of high-spending pokies players and the actions staff  took to encourage their gambling.

“It’s pretty much all venues,”  says one in a video interview. “I’ve been to venues where they do the same tactics. And it’s not OK.”

According to the whistleblower the woman known by management as Queen Bee was middle-aged and had previously worked in a professional job. But after the death of her parents she began to gamble heavily.

“She was depressed, she was also on workers comp, so she wasn’t working. And the money that she had, she obviously didn’t know what to do with, because she was laid up, not working.

“I saw her lose, at least two grand every night, honestly. And the one reason I know that is because I cleared all the pokie machines at night-time.

“Basically her machine is reserved for her only, especially if we know she is coming in,” the staff member said.

“Sometimes she would ring up and ask, 'Is anyone playing our machine,' or her machine I should say. And we’d be like 'Yep, yep yep.' So she’d be like, 'Maybe I will come in in half an hour' ... You’d just put a reserved sign on it and wait for her to come in.

"Because she wouldn’t play any other machines, and it was apparently too important for her to go anywhere else, even thought she was only going to other ALH pubs."

One of the staff members said hourly reports were issued to the pokies rooms in ALH pubs about their turnover compared with other pubs in the chain in order to encourage staff to increase their gambling take, and that Woolworths was aware its staff were exploiting addiction.

“Yep, 100 per cent they know. Why do you think they send out so many reports, like hourly reports.

“It’s not ethical. It’s ridiculous. Even though they work for the same company, Woolworths and ALH, they get all these reports about, ‘This club made this, this club took this, this club took that’. So it’s like a little competition between who made the most money in a pokie room’.”

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A spokesman for ALH said via a statement that the company was committed to the responsible service of gambling.

"To this end, we are currently reviewing our responsible gambling practices across the country. ALH note the allegations.

"We have actively encouraged all staff to raise any concerns regarding the operation of our venues, we have made a public commitment to be a leader in responsible gambling and we need to get to the bottom of any conduct which falls short of our values, so we can deliver on this commitment."