Minister spotlights gambling issues

Matt Stewart | 27th June 2009

National MP Nathan Guy has spent the past week in "a whirlwind of briefings and meetings," after getting a promotion and yesterday visited Masterton to address the New Zealand Licensing Trust Association on cleaning up the gaming industry.

Mr Guy has been thrust into the job replacing sacked MP Richard Worth and taking on all his engagements as the new minister, outside Cabinet, of internal affairs.

At 39, he is the youngest member of John Key's executive team and spoke to the gathered licensing trusts on the direction of gambling policy in relation to gaming machine community funding in what he called "a period of financial uncertainty", in which "large corporates are likely to reduce their donations and sponsorships".

"This means that the better allocation of grants through outcome based funding will be an important way to support our communities."

Mr Guy said meeting and listening to community and gambling sector views on the various issues is important because gambling is "a significant area of economic activity in New Zealand," citing the figures for 2007/08 when:

n Gambling turnover exceeded $16b

n Expenditure (player losses) was just over $2b

n The amount spent on gaming machines in pubs and clubs was $938m

n Gambling provided over $400m to various community purposes and around $280m in sector-specific taxation

In lieu of any "specific decisions about the future direction of gambling policy in New Zealand," Mr Guy went on to discuss the Government's priorities for non-casino gaming machine, including maximising community funding generated by pokies and "resolving questionable grant funding practices in the sector", which he called a "key priority".

On the first point Mr Guy said efficiency in gaming machine-generated community funding is an "important objective at any time but in the current economic climate when machine revenue is declining just as demand for community funding is rising, it is even more of a priority."

On the matter of questionable grant practices Mr Guy said there are "deep concerns about how the present arrangements are working", saying a recurring theme is a loss of confidence in the "current framework for the distribution of gaming machine profits to community purposes".

He then covered many of the issues associated with these concerns, including the potential for conflict of interest in grant allocation, the schism between commercial and community objectives in the gaming sector, "inappropriate" funding for sports pros and professional teams, educating venues on new harm minimisation and prevention enshrined in legislation and identifying problem gambling.