The ethical dilemma that is the pokies

It’s a shocking statistic: four of the five top pokie spending districts by population are in the Bay of Plenty: Kawerau, Rotorua, O¯ po¯ tiki and Whakata¯ ne. In areas with some of the best weather in the country, people spend hours feeding money into neon machines in dark corners of pubs, clubs and TABS, hoping for their unlikely luck to come in.

According to a 2020 white paper by the Problem Gambling Foundation, from losses of $939 million in pokie machines in 2019, $241m was paid out in grants to community and sports groups. Overall grants totalled $289m.

The foundation cites a survey that found only 1.3 per cent of Kiwis regularly play the pokies.

A Government discussion document on reducing pokies harm said 10 per cent played the pokies at least once in the year.

Both documents agree highly deprived areas host far more gambling venues than wealthier areas. With more venues and machines comes more access, more normalisation.

O¯ po¯ tiki Mayor Lyn Riesterer calls pokies a plague. Her East Coast district, one of the most deprived in New Zealand, has four venues and 57 machines — and $3m poured into the slots last year.

Compare that to the smaller but low-deprivation Mackenzie District — four venues, 37 machines, and $1.1m lost last year.

Problem gamblers are estimated to contribute anywhere from 30 to 60 per cent of the losses, the foundation said.

The upside is the slice of losses that goes to funding for community and sports groups.

But it is an ethical dilemma for some of those groups, forced to accept the proceeds of gambling to keep the lights on and maintain affordability for members.

The portion of the lost money that does get redistributed directly to communities does not necessarily come back to where it was spent in the same amounts. The foundation says some goes to national public programmes and sports interests.

Gambling harm might be a national problem, but when it comes to pokies, it’s far from an evenly spread one.

Trying to balance the harm from gambling with the good of community group funding is a tenuous enough formula, but even more so when the gains do not match the losses.

The groups that have to count on this money are often part of the social fabric — grassroots sport, for example. Rescue helicopters. They deserve funding.

But how tragic we’ve created a system for meeting this need that is so appallingly overreliant on poor people putting cash into gambling machines.

There has to be a better way.