Ex-addict backs pokies proposal
Brenda McQuillan used to flick on the lights when she came home from playing the pokies – to check if the electricity was still connected.
‘‘I had no money, couldn’t pay the rent, huge debt,’’ the Nelson resident recalls.
There were times during that period of her life in the 1990s when the power was cut off. There was no money for a phone for two to three years.
‘‘I was [at the pokies venue] at 9.30am, as soon as it opened, and gambled until the money was gone,’’ says McQuillan, who now helps others as a problem gambling consumer adviser.
A conviction for theft in 1999 was a turning point. ‘‘I’d never done anything wrong before that.’’ Self-exclusion from pokie venues was another key factor in helping her avoid the machines.
‘‘My addiction will always be there, but that horrible feeling waking up, that urge, it’s gone.’’
McQuillan believes that a reduction in pokie machine numbers would help other problem gamblers who play in a ‘‘harmful manner’’ like she did. She is backing the provision of a sinking lid on pokie machine numbers that has been included in a Tasman District Council draft gambling venues policy, which is now out for public consultation.
Addiction Advice and Assessment Services director Mathew McMillan also supports the sinking lid proposal. ‘‘It’s a good place to start,’’ he said.
Pokies were the problem for 90 per cent of the people from Tasman district seeking help from his Ministry of Health-contracted service, McMillan said.
‘‘It’s not online [gambling], it’s not the horses – it’s the pokies.’’
For McQuillan, it was always the pokies. The total experience was the attraction, including the sounds in a venue with multiple machines. ‘‘You know what machine you like using, you go to that machine.’’
Gaming Machine Association chairman Bruce Robertson said the council’s proposed policy would not help to reduce problem gambling but would accelerate the migration of the gambling spend to offshore internet and mobile-based offerings.
Offshore-based online gambling posed ‘‘considerable risks’’ because it was accessible 24 hours a day from the comfort and privacy of a person’s home, he said.
However, McQuillan says online gambling never interested her. Nor would she have had the money for the necessary internet connection and device on which to play.
McMillan said online gambling was a separate issue.
‘‘The reality is that the majority of people presenting for help identify the pub and club pokies as the main form of harmful gambling,’’ he said.
‘‘My clinical impression is that most people specialise with their gambling. If people develop an issue with the pub pokies, they tend to do OK once they can address that issue.’’
Robertson said clubs and community groups, ‘‘including sports clubs, community theatres, schools, and the local Coastguard service’’, received about $3.2 million a year from the gaming machines located in the district’s 13 gaming venues.
He urged community groups to make submissions to the council detailing what they had achieved with the funding obtained.
However, McMillan said he believed the pokie community funding model was ‘‘pretty ineffective’’. A ‘‘big chunk’’ of the money went towards running the venue, to the gaming machine societies that owned the machines, and as tax to the Government.
The ripple effect in the community from harmful gambling was huge, he said.
Submissions on the council’s draft gambling venues policy close on September 13.
‘‘The majority of people presenting for help identify the pub and club pokies as the main form of harmful gambling.’’ Mathew McMillan, Addiction Advice and Assessment Services