"Unfortunately, it's probably the people who can least afford to be spending money on the pokies that are. But the less being spent on them and the more going into the home, the better - and that is a real credit to those people," he said.
Napier Mayor Bill Dalton was delighted with the decline of dollars dropping into the city's pokies.
"I believe the pokies target the wrong people in society and these numbers showing a drop are great," he said.
He was encouraged by the effectiveness of the sinking lid policy but stressed a balance needed to remain with the reduction of pokie machines.
"There are a lot of organisations that depend, almost solely, on pokies for funds. It is important that we move away from pokies but not all at once."
The number of gaming venues across the region also fell, from 51 to 49, bringing the number of machines down from 734 to 704 year-on-year.
Bar manager at Napier's Red Carpet sports bar Helen Karauria said people were becoming more aware of the dangers of playing the pokies.
"A lot of people have gone overboard and they are starting to realise that they have spent too much money, so they've taken out self-exclusion orders."
People worried about their gambling could apply to Internal Affairs to have themselves excluded from venues, she said.
"You can't go anywhere because we've got photos [of them]. We say to them, 'If you come back we're going to notify the police and you're going to be fined'."
The odd person tried to slip through but the order was difficult to get around, she said.
Nationally, machine numbers fell from 17,670 to 17,266 and gambling spend declined 3.3 per cent from $839.7 million to $811.6 million.
Pokies are New Zealand's most harmful form of gambling, with 58 per cent of problem gamblers who seek help citing the machines as the primary source of their problem.
But Problem Gambling Foundation acting chief executive Graham Aitken said people were losing interest in pokies.
"I think people are starting to understand you can't win on them."
Young people were especially clued up.
"Machines have been around for a couple of decades now.
"Younger people don't play these machines.
"Younger people are a lot smarter than the rest of us."
Council sinking lid policies had also helped bring figures down, he said.
In other cases, venues had been refurbished to a standard not suitable for pokies.
"They've gone upmarket and pokies machines tend to be associated with downmarket operations."
Even so, pokies were still a problem.
"The fact that [expenditure] is going down doesn't mean we can all shut up shop and go home," Mr Aitken said.
By law, 20 per cent of gaming machine profits go on tax, while at least 37 per cent must go back into community projects.
