Parker’s plan to make
John Parker, the former world.New Zealand batsman, has developed a scheme that could transform sporting and charitable fundraising in New Zealand and potentially the
Parker’s plan could also start to fray the insidious ties that bind gambling to sport.
The name of the project is CommUnity and it will be launched in a month’s time on March 17.
The only thing that is difficult to grasp about it is why no one had thought of it sooner. It is a beautiful and simple way to put money back into your community without all the hassle of giving up part of your weekend to sweat over a sausage sizzle.
The idea is that certain stores in your town or area will be signed up to CommUnity. Every time you shop at the store, a percentage of the sales will be diverted to community projects.
In recent years local and national sport has become more and more reliant on receiving windfalls from gambling. Whether it is Lotto or pokies, one person’s addictive misery in funding another person’s ambition or recreation. There are nearly 15,000 gaming machines across New Zealand which bring in around $2.5 million a day.
The recent announcement of an online bingo game has only added to the concerns of experts in the field. Addiction expert Professor Peter Adams, from the University of Auckland’s School of Population Health, recently told that Lotto played a role as the state-sanctioned face of the gaming industry.
Adams said: ‘‘It’s the main contributor to normalising gambling, playing down the harms and also promoting the idea that all the gambling industry plug into – that gambling is a social good in that it provides money for the community and charities.’’
When the government was asked if it would table legislation around online gambling it declined to answer. That tends to mean that the answer is no, but that ministers don’t want to be heard saying no. Instead it calls state sponsored gambling a ‘‘safe, trusted alternative’’ to all the online gambling so readily available on our phones.
It is an invidious argument about a habit that surged again when this country came out of Covid and which causes so much misery to all poorer communities. Surely the government should be making access to gambling as difficult as possible. It certainly shouldn’t be glamorising it by propping up New Zealand’s top athletes with gambling money.