When Helen Clark’s Labour government came to power in 1999 there were 14,000 “non-casino” pokie machines in New Zealand. Four years later there were 25,000.
Labour was asleep at the wheel.
Under community alarm the Clark government encouraged local bodies to put in place “sinking lid” policies so pokies could not be transferred to a new venue when one venue closed. Numbers have crawled down under this policy to 15,400 now but the income from the machines is going up.
A new report out last week paints the same grim picture we have heard for years.
It’s no surprise that there are five times more machines per person in the high deprivation areas of New Zealand than anywhere else.
And that’s where disproportionate numbers of Maori and Pasifika live.
Our most vulnerable communities are deliberately targeted by these parasites on poverty.
To spell it out more clearly – it’s estimated that HALF the profits from these machines come from people with addictions. That’s the business model the venues follow. No wonder the so called “host responsibility” measures employed are a sham.
The “hosts” want more problem gamblers and more profit.
The well-heeled beneficiaries of these addictions – the pokie trusts and venue owners – claim there are huge community benefits with 30% of the profits going to community groups who otherwise wouldn’t get funded.
But why would any self-respecting community fund community-building activities with a community destroying activity.
The simple fact is low-income communities are destroyed by pokies to fund community-building activities in higher income areas.
Will this latest report spark action to remove pokies from low-income areas? I have more hope that this may happen because the Internal Affairs portfolio is not held by Labour.
Over to you Tracey Martin.
One way to really help is to feed the coin slots a full tube of super glue
then walk out like yeah
Noted, lolbagz!!
It defies understanding why we still have these machines so ubiquitously available around the country. They are a blight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHx6OOmeIJU
Labour a sleep at the wheel again ????
Why we ever permitted these ghastly machines into Aotearoa, I’ll never know. They should be banned, scrapped, and recycled into something useful.
They have no useful purpose.
National was warned in 1995 about the social harm that would come with deregulating the gambling act but went on regardless because the social cost to the poor was an acceptable price to pay for the big casinos setting up here and the huge profits that would flow from that.
And every other western ” democracy ” has casinos operating so why not NZ.
You only have to look across the Tasman to see the destruction wrought on poorer communities who were always going to be attracted to the elusive prospect of winning big and escaping the misery of their destitute lives.
The fact that Key and his henchman ” subverted ” democracy and amended the law so that Sky City could have more pokies only goes to show the contempt in which they hold the poor who are attracted to play these machines in the vain hope of escaping their miserable existence through gambling.
Could this simply be a failure of Maths Education 😉
Theres no math Joe the house always wins its fixed that way.
not just pokies what about all the bottle stores in poorer areas
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