The number of gambling machines in Marlborough is set to decrease.
It comes after the Marlborough District Council adopted a “sinking lid” approach to its gambling venues and machines.
It means no new gambling venues or machines are allowed to open, should one close. However, two venues under the same deprivation level will be able to merge into the sum of machines previously operated by each club, or 18 machines – whichever is less.
The Marlborough District Council earlier this year set out to review its Gambling Venue Policy, with the council’s licencing inspector Georgia Murrin recommending it adopted a sinking lid policy.
One of the objectives of the policy is to minimise harm to the community caused by gambling.
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Figures from May this year showed Marlborough had 12 venues and 165 gaming machines in operation. Since March 2015, there had been a 40% reduction in the number of venues, and a 33.7% reduction in the number of machines.
A panel made up of chairperson councillor Barbara Faulls, councillor Ben Minehan and councillor Thelma Sowman met in September to hear from five submitters on the proposed policy.
They also considered a further submission after the council received an anonymous email from a woman who said she had the “odd flutter” on the pokies and would be sad to see the number of machines reduced.
She said since the closure of the Clubs of Marlborough, it was hard to find an empty machine in the region. Sometimes, when she visited a tavern in the middle of the day all the machines were being used.
Anthony Phelps/STUFF
Figures from May this year show Marlborough has 12 venues and 165 gaming machines in operation.
She was concerned there were people in the community who would spend four or more hours on a machine in the hope they would strike big, and suggested that publicans should put a time limit on gamblers to stop them becoming a problem and allow others to “have a turn”.
She also said you should be able to get extra change from the pub in order to play, rather than going to an ATM.
She said that life would be dull without the pokie machines, “as one needs a break from time to time, as long as they control their own money”.
She complained that her money did not seem to last as long, and it used to be easier to win free spins.
“The new machines are certainly not the same,” the email said.
Meanwhile, organisations like the Gaming Machine Association, the Lion Foundation and the Pub Charity Limited did not support the sinking lid policy.
“Corporate societies” – sometimes known as “pokie trusts” – were licenced by the Department of Internal Affairs to operate gambling machines in clubs or commercial venues. Corporate societies owned the machines, and entered into agreements with the venue who “host” the machines.
The venue received a commission for this – which at most was 16% – based on weekly turnover.
Ron Lindsay/Stuff
Marlburians spent nearly $12m on pokie machines in pubs, clubs and TABs in 2022.
A portion of the money was then distributed to community groups by the corporate societies through grants, though not all of it was distributed, as there was only a minimum requirement of 40% that had to be granted.
The Lion Foundation said the current policy, which was a cap on gaming machines at 240, was working well and balanced the potential harm from gambling whilst preserving access to community funding.
The foundation supported capping the number of gaming machines to 165, an option Murrin had put forward, but said was not the preferred.
At a full council meeting on December 14, councillor Faulls said there were a lot of other councils in New Zealand moving towards a sinking lid policy.
“We did have quite a good discussion going backwards and forwards around community good, social good, that comes into our community from either Pub Charity or the Lions Foundation and the pokies as a whole,” Faulls said.
“But we looked also at the agencies who were propping up individuals and families who were affected by gambling harm, and we weighed up the good in terms of grants that come out to the community.
“Often … the money is coming out of the areas of higher deprivation within our community and it’s going back to areas where, in general, the community is made up of people who are socially and financially more able to support themselves, or their groups or their sporting teams.
“So in recognising that, we believe the recommendation that we’ve made, in that there is a sinking lid … is the right way to go forward.”