The Otago Daily Times has been hot on the heels of dodgy pokie trust scams for some time. Today they have a story about an alleged “money-go-round” involving several south Auckland pokie machine venues and southern racing clubs. Personally I find the idea that the profits from pokie venues in South Auckland are being channelled to racing clubs in the lower South Island pretty appalling.
Pokie trusts should be investing the money collected through pokie machines back into the communities they are taken from. In recent months we’ve seen countless examples of pokie trusts using money that should have been applied for charitable purposes to compete with each other for venues, refurbish venues, and even wine and dine people at flash restaurants. It’s time to end the rorts.
I questioned the Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy about this when he appeared before the Select Committee during the Estimates process. He referred almost every question to officials. When I asked if he thought the legislation needed changing, he said no. In other words, he’s washing his hands of the problem. That’s not good enough. It’s time for him to earn his ministerial salary…
Bummer man
It’s a shame that its the trust and foundations that bring the industry in to disrepute, Clubs and RSA’s are much more regulated under the class 4 gaming act then the trusts. At least if people play the machines at clubs it goes back to the members of the club and the community sporting groups in grants.
Rodders – there are some very good trusts out there. In my own electorate I think the Rimutaka Licensing Trust provides a textbook example of how it should be done. All of their money goes back into the local community. From what I’ve seen, most of the pokie revenue generated from clubs ends up being spent within those clubs.
These machines suck money out of people who can ill afford the indulgence. I don’t know of many well off people playing the pokies. There are probably some but I suspect the overwhlming majority are on low incomes
I think the things are an abomination but now that we have them would the pokie punters who were prevented from spending at the pubs and clubs waste their money on internet sites and lose it to the community and the country?
Pokies do so much damage to those who can least afford it. They should be banned.
I don’t think you could go far wrong having the abolition of Pokies as a key policy plank, especially for Labour.
I’ll tell you what. NZ can lead the way.
Do exactly to pokie machines what we’ve already done to cigarettes and cigarette packets.
No lights, black and white only print, no sounds except a PC speaker beep. Maximum coin size accepted is 10c.
And a warning label across the front “WARNING: USE PRESENTS A HABIT FORMING RISK”
That’ll sort it.
Does all gaming fall under the DIA Chris..?
I am with Loota on this
And Chris you or rather Labour had 9 years to deal with this
So let’s have a firm policy going into the next election, it could and should be a winner
Chris, you don’t need to do anything more than make pokie machine PAYOUTS a criminal offense – that is, ban the payouts. Let people drop coins in and play the machines if they like the flahing lights and sounds, but like an arcade game, with no prospect of a financial reward.
That would kill the problem effectively, and without any possibility of rorts continuing. And lets people who are fascinated with the silly things keep whiling away their hours of they so wish – they just won’t be addicted to pokies hoping for a change in financial position.
Bob I found your comment in spam and took the trouble to look you up. You have past your three month ban and can come back as a commenter. However we will keep you in moderation for a while. Clare
R A F , since you seem to have little awareness what Labour did do over the last nine years, abit of history. Previously the machines were only monitored on a say monthly basis, via site visits and so on . This where the rorts were happining: from bar owners who falsified figures and the bar owners controlled some of the spending of the trusts and would only give money to sports club who visited the bar for drinking.
With online monitoring of all machines, payments cant be fiddled and the pokie machine trusts spending was tightened up.
A new phenomenon is well off individuals buying up bars and setting up a new pokie machine trust to divert the lions share of profits to a few well heeled racing and sports clubs such as Rugby and League.
Rather than the money being out right stolen its now going to distant professional sports and not local amateur sports and community groups.
The community controlled trusts are doing OK, its the anonymous smaller ones, like a Trust mainly running in pubs associated with mayor John Banks who had as one of its charitable purposes , party political donations, ie National party and ACT.
I dont think this one operates anymore or has been bought to heel.
Rorts like this are always going to happen as long as gambling in New Zealand is effectively nationalised. End the licensing regime and let people put the machines wherever they like, with whatever sort of win/loss ratio they like.
Players will soon realise which machines give them the best chance of winning and they will migrate to those ones, eventually putting the rip-off artists out of business.
State-run gambling sucks money from poor, gullible people far quicker than free market gambling because there is no genuine competition. It’s sick and twisted to steal more money from these vulnerable people then give it back to their “community” and act like it makes up for it.
So you want to start genuine competition to see which private enterprise can suck money from the poor the fastest? After all, they’re in it to maximise their profits. While having no responsibility to return any of that money to the community?
Good on you.
Kleefer “Players will soon realise which machines give them the best chance of winning and they will migrate to those ones, eventually putting the rip-off artists out of business.”
Unfortunately that is not the reality for problem gamblers. They persist irrationally regardless of the odds against them.