In a recently published opinion piece in Hawke's Bay Today, Kushlan Sugathapala made an argument based on specific claims that require a response.
Contrary to the claims made:
- spending per capita on community gaming machines is not up and increasing but over 40 per cent down in inflation-adjusted terms from a peak in 2004.
- the year on year "increase" in spending reported in 2021 is not an increase at all but the consequence of the reduced spend in 2020 when venues were closed in lockdown.
- the number of community gaming machines, or per capita exposure, has halved since the peak of 2004.
- like Lotto, community gaming machines distribute 100 per cent of their profits in grants.
- unlike Lotto, games return 92 per cent to players in prizes - not 54 per cent - and we don't spend over $30m per year of community money on media advertising.
- gaming machines are located where they are because the law requires they be in licensed premises (pubs and taverns) which are located where local and central government permits (ironically many local government policies won't allow them to be relocated).
- New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of problem gambling in the world but one of the least effective health responses according to a recent independent health audit.
- 54 per cent of people seeking help for problem gambling are not linked to community gaming machines but Lotto, TAB, casino and online gambling products.
- despite it being readily available less than 1,200 people nationally have sought to be formally excluded from one or more community gaming venues.
- there is no clinical classification of 'high risk gamblers' referred to by Kushlan Sugathapala, due to the very small number of actual problem gamblers. Low and moderate risk gamblers are added to inflate statistics despite the absence of adverse consequences linked to those categories.
- problem gambling providers and the Department of Internal Affairs actively opposed the gaming industry implementing facial recognition systems to detect excluded gamblers and the Ministry of Health has refused to assist with funding.
- over 60 per cent of reported problem gamblers are relapsed and there is widespread dissatisfaction with the health response amongst those seeking help.
- there is a wilful misrepresentation as to the distribution of gaming funds with 85 per cent of community gaming grants returned to the region they were raised in, as opposed to just 18 per cent for Lotto.
The list of misinformation goes on and on. I accept that Kushlan's report was an opinion piece but it does masquerade as fact.
The most alarming piece of wilful ignorance has to be the failure to consider the counter narrative: what is the alternative? The suggestion being more "benign" gambling like Lotto (11 per cent of problem gambling help-seeking) - or nothing at all.
Kushlan and others promoting this version of utopia ignore the smartphone in their pocket, the portal to not only the TAB and Lotto online products but literally hundreds of websites and thousands of gaming machine games available 24 hours a day, seven days a week - with many "pushing" gambling opportunities into social media and other alerts.
At least in community-based gaming Kushlan has a licensed industry, operators and venues that can be held accountable, and community returns, tax revenue, and payments to local businesses to criticise.
Good luck with those complaints when it's a website based in Gibraltar or the Isle of Man.
Be careful what you wish for. The growth of online gambling and the demise of controlled and supervised spaces is a major step backwards, not forwards.
Martin Cheer is the CEO of Pub Charity
martin@pubcharitylimited.org.nz
