The Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill

According to the explanatory note, there tends to be more gambling machines or pokies in lower income communities and that Māori and Pasifika groups are being targeted and harmed by this practice. 

  • The first aim of the Bill is to address this inequity and enable local authorities to reduce the number of, or even eliminate, pokies from areas where they are doing harm. 

  • Second, the Bill proposes to cut out racing and racing-stake money as an authorised "charitable" purpose as it states that is inconsistent with the “community benefit tenor” of the rest of the principal Act.

  • Third, it requires that 80 per cent of the gambling proceeds be returned to community groups in the same geographic area where the gambling venues operate.

  • Fourth, this Bill also phases out "pokie trusts" or corporate societies as the distributors money from pokie machines. The Bill would see the responsibility for funds distributions passed to special committees of local authorities, modelled on the Creative New Zealand creative communities fund committees.

  • Fifth, player tracking systems will be implemented to assist gamblers who are having problems to ensure players were aware of how much money they have spent as well as how much time they have been playing the machine. This would be supplemented by pre-commit cards with which the gambler could pre-set a limit on the amount of losses and time spent gambling on pokie machines.

To read The Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill in full click HERE