“Please don’t tell me that they can stop gambling, that they can look after themselves.
“Don’t tell me it is good business for the community. I have heard it all.
“You are our leaders. That is what I am saying to you, for God’s sake, and leaders look after the ‘least’.
She was there when they stopped alcohol funding.
“Who is to say there is not another way to fund our community?
“Why the hell are we taking from the least of us?
“I’m the first to say that Gisborne and the district are doing very well under your leadership.
“But there is another story out there. There is the story of the grandparents who are losing their homes, grandparents who are put in a home so people can gamble their money.
“There is a story of kids going to school without food.
“I can take you and show you the houses where the kids don’t get breakfast because the parents gambled it all.
“Don’t tell me it is not happening, because I know it is happening.
She was there for the businesses that had been embezzled, for those who could not talk because it was such a hidden thing, she said.
Between 100 and 150 people had asked for help but that was only the ones who asked for help.
“How many more are not asking for help? I can tell you — a hell of a lot.
How could charities give out money when that money came from hidden little dark places?
“It is money not spent on groceries and education. It is money that has been pushed into those damn machines because they are the ones that draw the hope in.”
Mrs Aston told the council the “hopeless” were funding everything that charities and trusts asked for.
The Lions Trust had refused her bowling club’s application because the club did not have pokie machines.
“How dare they blackmail our members?
“What we are asking for is to look at your finances ethically.
“I would love you to join the council of Dunedin.
Governments had loaded so much on to communities that they had become addicted to sitting down and making applications for grants.
Children were being introduced to gambling through games on their smartphones.
The money was going around.
“The vulnerable are putting it into the machines. We are taking it out — and we are giving it out to them because they are putting it back into the machines.
“That is not ethical, that is not moral,” she said.
Tuta Ngarimu asked that a policy be put in place with input from the community.
He and Mrs Aston said the Kaiti community had been much happier since the pokie machines there were removed.
