Sirene Vicky

Sirene Vicky

Analyzing the Effects of Gaming Trusts on the Lower Hutt City Council

Hutt City Council is reviewing its section 4 Gambling Policy in the council chamber of horrors while bar managers and rehabilitation workers eye the menace at ground zero. Jackpot sirens are shrieking like warning bells in a city refusing to come to terms with its own addiction.

Bob Little died two years ago from six decades of smoking under the guise of clinical categorisation: emphysema. The last time we met he was bed-ridden - plugged and drugged - in the Levin Home for War Vets. Wrapped around his fingers were all the ingredients for a roll-your-own cigarette: fluffy brown tobacco, a neat rectangle of rice paper and an innocent-white filter. It came together as we talked in a room full of ghastly oxygen tanks, hanging bags of liquid and nurses draped in sterility. His hands shook so violently while trying to strike a match that, as the nurses had silently foreseen, he gave up. His life was taken by nicotine: that's a fact, but gambling addiction killed his livelihood.

Bob Little left nothing more than memories to his daughter - the Home had taken the rest - and she cries when I ask about her childhood. She left school at 15 to work as a seamstress and her Mother died in a house fire after arriving home drunk and failing to notice a flaming frying pan. Bob's daughter was 10 years old. "I don't remember much straight after my Mother died. You know, Dad always loved a beer - he'd have a pile of crates by the door - but he enjoyed the horses too much." Bob was unemployed and spent what he had at the pub and TAB before becoming unfit to care for himself.

These days, with the growing popularity of poker gaming machines in bars, you can scratch both itches under one roof. New Zealanders annually lose $1.3 billion to the tinkling of slot-machines. The Little's lived in a small state house in Naenae, Lower Hutt. Naenae, Taita, Wainouiomata and Stokes Valley contributed over $10 million to Lower Hutt pokie machines out of a total of over $28 million collected locally in 2009.

Department of Internal Affairs research - the government agency allocated the task of dealing with problem gambling - revealed Polynesians have six times the problem gambling rate of Pakeha and Maori have three times. Over half the problem gamblers are 30 years old. The populations of Taita, Naenae, Stokes Valley and Wainuiomata are 40 per cent Polynesian and 27 per cent Maori, and the median age is 29.

Here lie the twisted breeding grounds of gambling addiction. Conditions are perfect and there's easy money to be made so, being the sporty little entrepreneur that you are, you maximise the number of machines available in those areas. Simple economics: supply and demand. The DIA controls the licensing of gambling venues but the pubs and clubs applying for licenses are concentrated in areas deemed fit for the breeding process. The cold irony is these targeted social demographics earn a lower average wage than Pakeha.

Paul Tymkin manages the Exchange Bar and Hotel in Lower Hutt and our steady conversation is out of place. I feel soaked in ale, drenched in the babbling mouth of another Friday night as the ring-ding-ding of the pokie room plays its disjointed symphony. "All staff are trained, by law, in harm minimalisation," he begins. "A person may spend 500 bucks in a machine but for all we know they may make $500,000 - there's no personal relation... if the bar hands out a venue exclusion notice, the guy just goes to another pub down the road. It's just our bar saying you've got a problem, we're washing our hands of you."

Paul was approached by Endeavour trust to have gaming machines installed.

Hutt City Council is reviewing section 4 of its Gambling Policy: the total number of machines available to the public per population. The council is hearing oral submissions at the end of May with final policy to be set on June 15.

Kashmir Kaur, the council's policy advisor, has been filling me in: Wellington's biggest trust, Pelorus, and the New Zealand Community Trust (NZCT) provided hand-on-heart advocacy to the necessary evil of the rise of the machines in the name of community development. NZCT supplied two key submission points:

1. The community may lose out on the funds that these extra gaming machines could provide 
2. The number of problem gamblers is small and is not related to the number of gaming machines available.

NZCT quoted Ministry of Health statistics showing that during 2009, "146 people in Hutt City sought help for problem gambling. This number includes family members and other support people seeking help for a problem gambler."

Based on NZCT research, if only one person per addict advises them to seek help the Hutt City is left with 73 problem gamblers. In 2009, the Problem Gambling Foundation estimated the number at 1,954. They believe the addiction directly affects 13,678 people.

"By contrast, hundreds of customers enjoyed playing the pokies without having to seek help, and thousands of people enjoyed the benefits of funding from revenue generated by gaming machines."

The maximum number quoted here can be perceived as 900. 900 people playing for fun, plus 73 people playing due to addiction, totals 973. 73 out of 973 is eight percent. Eight percent of $28 million collected by machines is $2,240,000. $2,240,000 split between 73 addicts is $30,684 spent on average per addict.

$28 million divided by 900 people playing for fun equals $25,760,00. $25,760,00 divided by 900 equals $28,622 spent on average by people playing for fun.

These figures become astronomical when considering 90 percent of money put into pokies is returned to punters - $28 million collected is only 10 percent of the total amount bouncing between metal slots and soft back-pockets.

NZCT continues: "Reducing the cap on the number of gaming machines in Hutt City from 575 to 566 is unlikely to have any effect on the number of problem gamblers in the city."

Professor Max Abbott, Director of AUT University's Gambling and Addictions Research Centre, Dr Judith Stubbs from the University of NSW and John Storer from Judith Stubbs and Associates, Australia, conducted a meta-analysis on 34 studies on the number of addicts versus the number of available gaming machine. They found that every additional pokie machine in a community results in.8 of a new problem gambler: someone willing to risk anything of value on an uncertain outcome.

Vicki Hirini is a senior counsellor at Wellington's Oasis Centre for Problem Gambling. The Ministry of Health funds Oasis and all gambling trusts must pay a levy to the government. "Alot of the gambling problems need to be dealt with at government level. It's a hidden problem. It's where alcohol was about 30 years ago. Sadly ironic, considering 63 percent of alcoholics also have a gambling problem." "But isn't the money returned to the community through the trusts?" I asked. "For every $20 Maori lose to a machine, $1 is put into their community," she replied.

The Korokoro Community Pool Trust has received thousands of dollars from trusts including: Pelorus, Endeavour and Hutt Mana but there isn't a single pokie machine to be found in the suburb - I checked.

"A lot of people go through a period, but are able to pull it in. The majority of people aren't seeking help. The ones we see are the hardcore of the hardcore. There's nothing like denial, it's a helluva big river," Vicki explains.

I don't need to point out the socio-economic and social demographic aspects of the following: Hutt Golf Club received $37,000 from Pelorus while Hutt Valley Tennis Club received $50,000.

The trusts could take more responsibility in handing out the cash but it's not their responsibility to stop it coming in. Hell, that would be bad for business. So, young entrepreneurs, how can we keep things flowing? The old-fashioned way: sleep with the boss.

The Pelorus website states "whilst Pelorus has provided funding for the building we are indebted to the Hutt City Council for providing the setting for Sportshouse. This is a fantastic example of how council and a community funder can work in partnership."

Money, money, money.

NZCT granted the council $53,000.

Money, money, money.

A silent river of cash is flowing out of Hutt City's great unwashed and into the refined décor boardrooms of trusts apparently unwilling to "return to sender" in the name of The Greater Community. Pelorus' website boasts its grant list like a badge of honour and the council isn't making it harder to ignore the absence of names like Naenae, Taita, Stokes Valley and Wainouiomata. HCC appears dangling on the purse strings as it all boils down in 2010.

Article by Jared Nicoll

http://www.alongthelion.co.nz

 

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