A new study has found problem gambling amongst fly-in fly-out (FIFO) workers to be up to 15 times higher than in the general population.

Australian National University researcher Bruce Doran has looked at gambling behaviour among mobile construction workers in Queensland, finding gambling rates at a much higher level than the average.

Eleven per cent of the builders interviewed for the study were defined as problem gamblers.

The average rate of problem gambling in the broader Queensland community, 0.8 to 2 per cent of the adult population.

“Many of the mobile construction workers we interviewed in Queensland had worked in many remote areas of the state and across the country,” he said in an interview with the ABC.

“I am confident that the issues associated with social isolation, physical isolation and high rates of problem gambling are very likely to apply to FIFO populations as well.”

Across Australia, poker machines bring in $3 billion to state and territory coffers each year, collected from over 190,000 electronic gaming machines.

In the NT, restrictions on poker machines in pubs and clubs have recently been relaxed.

“We've got an enormous fly-in fly-out population who are looking for entertainment services and gaming machines can provide part of the entertainment that some of these fly-in fly-out workers are looking for,” the Northern Territory's Gaming Minister Peter Styles said.

Dr Doran said having more pokies in Territory pubs will mean more harm, especially for mobile workers.

“We found that pokies and pubs and those venues were indispensible to mobile construction workers,” he said.

“Often the people we interviewed spoke of how they would finish work, go to the pubs, discuss work and gamble.

“Other people spoke about how when they were looking for work that's where they'd actually go and pick up work within a few hours by just hanging out at the pub.”

The researcher said isolation had emerged as a motivating factor in FIFO builders’ vulnerability to gambling addiction.

“Mobile workers are socially and physically isolated — they're a long way from friends and family and support networks and they have a high level of disposable income,” he said.

“These are all risk factors in terms of the potential to gamble in a risky way and we certainly found they did.”

But there was a hint of good news, with a finding about what can safeguard mobile workers from gambling harm.

“One of the most interesting things we found was that one of the strongest mediating factors between whether a mobile worker fell into problem gambling or moderate risk gambling was whether they were in any kind of a relationship,” he said.

The study showed that being in a de facto relationship “meant the difference between a non-problem and problem gambler” for many at risk.