Hawke's Bay punters are spending less on pokie machines. Photo/Thinkstock
Hawke's Bay punters are spending less on pokie machines. Photo/Thinkstock
News that the public spend on pokie machines is declining is no surprise to anyone linked to the industry, whether they be businesses running the venues, trusts distributing funds, or sport and community organisations using them.
But it is a real wake-up call in an election year about how wehave yet another mechanism, set up to help some very crucial organisations, whose survival is now being threatened as the squeeze goes on a popular human behaviour which governments have hijacked to absolve them of what really is a bigger responsibility than most appreciate - until they think about it.
The rise and fall of the pokie, in this respect, follows that of other sports benefactors such as cigarettes and booze. There are organisations at community level that can barely afford to open the doors without them or the revenue relating to what in some people see as evils or blights on society ranked not too far from some of the evils some of these organisations, indirectly or otherwise, aim to help prevent.
Sports organisations - grass-roots good-doers who keep dodgy kids off the streets and pair them with better-off kids and mentors in hope that we all have better communities in which to live, relive this cycle too frequently.
Thus, they now, again, face times of uncertainty, about where the next penny will come from, the degrees and timing of demise determined mainly by the socio-economic throes in which each operates.
In the environment that exists, the businesses and trusts have been knights in shining armour, and some very quick thinking is needed not only about the future of the community sports and other funded groups, but also about the impact of sinking lids and other controls on businesses that have been given a legitimate reason to operate, like it or not.
