Pub: Ditching pokies worth the gamble

The locals in a tiny Northland town say fewer kids are going hungry these days.
They also say their pub - the oldest in New Zealand and the only place within a half-hour drive you can order a cold beer - is  again a place people go to talk to each other instead of gambling.
That's because the Horeke Tavern, in south Hokianga, ditched its pokie machines late last year.
The residents' association had become increasingly alarmed at the effects the pub's five poker machines were having on the isolated, low-income settlement. The pub owners agreed and the machines were sent packing.
Tunisia Joyce - who now leases the historic waterfront pub with husband Dawson Joyce and fellow Horeke resident Graham Campbell - says a few punters keep asking her to bring the machines back.  She's refusing.
"They're no good for this community," she says.
"People were spending too much on the pokies and it's not a rich area, anyway. People here have to travel to get food, and to travel you have to buy petrol."
And with the pokies gone, the pub is returning to its role as a social hub.
"They kept people from socialising. This pub used to rock without them, people would come in here a couple of times a week and have a good talk. With the pokies here, people just thought this place was a bank. They'd get money out on their cards and put it straight into the machines."
Tunisia, who owes her name to her grandfather's North African exploits with the Maori Battalion, doesn't know any locals who ended up in financial strife - but reckons families definitely had less money.
Regular Phil Campbell, however, said the punters who used to play the pokies most were the very ones who couldn't afford it.
"We had kids here going without breakfast and lunch."
In the old days the pub at least had a say in where pokies grants were spent, but that's no longer the case, he says.
 Northland gambling counsellor Diane Matthews says that when previous owner Peter Maddren bought the Horeke Tavern he assumed the pokie profits went back to the community - but that wasn't the case.
"Plus, everyone there is so linked, he could see the effects in front of his eyes."
Problem Gambling Foundation chief executive Graeme Ramsey says only a small proportion of pokies spending returns to the community as grants.
Worse, the bulk of spending is in poor areas, such as Kaikohe, while much of the grant money goes to already well-off areas such as the Bay of Islands.
"They really are transferring money from poor to rich, from brown to white, from women to men," he says.
Pokie machines are in the spotlight again because the Far North District Council is in the middle of a three-yearly review of its bylaws around gaming and TAB venues. The council is proposing to stick with its policy of refusing new pokie licences until the number of machines in the district drops to the national average.
The Far North has one pokie machine for every 104 people aged 18 and over, well above the national average of one for every 156 people.
A near-record 512 submissions have poured into the council's Kaikohe headquarters, many of them calling for tighter restrictions.
Among those urging tougher action is the Problem Gambling Foundation, which says efforts to reduce the number of pokies in the Far North shouldn't stop once the district reaches the national average.
Mr Ramsey, of Baylys Beach, near Dargaville, wants a genuine "sinking lid" policy.
 That means each time a gambling venue closes or moves, its pokie machines can't be replaced - so the number of machines will eventually drop to zero.
With its high Maori population, high unemployment and low incomes, the Far North is anything but an average part of New Zealand.
"So why should the limit on the number of pokie machines be the national average?"
Maori and the poor are also at the greatest risk from pokies, which are usually concentrated in low-income areas, he says.
Kaikohe has one pokie machine for every 41 people, while Kerikeri has one for every 105 people.
In Kaeo, the figure is even more startling - one machine for every 19 townsfolk.
Mr Ramsey says the Kaipara District Court brought in a sinking lid policy about eight years ago.
As a result, spending on pokies in the Kaipara, a district grappling with many of the same issues as the Far North, is now among the lowest in the country.
Of the 512 submissions on the Far North District Council's Gaming and TAB policy, more than 430 were in the form of a postcard calling for a "sinking lid" policy. The  rest were a mix of support and opposition for the  policy, with submissions from the gambling industry, Pub Charity and groups that benefit from pokies grants, as well as submissions about problems gambling causes.
The hearings will be held in Kaikohe on July 29. The only issue to have sparked more feedback to the  council was a septic-tank bylaw in 2005 which saw more than 600 submissions.
 The Aratapu Tavern, south of Dargaville,  ditched pokies last year.