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Auckland Central election candidates came face to face with gambling addiction yesterday when they were challenged by a self-confessed "pathological gambler" who has sunk $1 million into poker machines.
The man, who gave his name as Matt, called for a parliamentary committee inquiry into gambling machine manufacturers such
as Aristocrat, which he said was being sued in a civil court action in Australia for designing machines to hook addicts.
Auckland Central MP Judith Tizard supported an inquiry and said local councils should be given powers to ban pokies from their districts.
Green list MP Sue Bradford called for a nationwide ban on pokies in pubs and supported giving extra powers to councils as a second-best option.
But National candidate Nikki Kaye was non-committal. The Problem Gambling Foundation, a co-organiser of the meeting, said National had promised to issue a gambling policy before the election but it had not appeared yet.
Matt, an articulate man aged about 30 who declined to give his surname because he had a "public profile", said gambling had driven him at one stage on to a welfare benefit.
"Poverty does not cause gambling addiction. Gambling addiction causes poverty," he said.
"Aristocrat makes $1.4 billion in turnover a year. I'd like to see the blame taken away from gamblers and put back on to those companies."
He said he was a Labour supporter but the Government had failed to act on pokies. "I know people who have attempted suicide from it. I considered it myself," he said.
"I'm a reasonably astute person that absolutely doesn't need this problem in my life, and I'm dealing with it the best way I can.
"Unless there is some very serious discussion about this within Parliament, I'll be doing something quite radical. I'm going to have to."
Ms Tizard said she had felt the power of addiction herself when she found herself playing card games on her computer until 1am at nights.
"Having taken the card games off my computer, I have some understanding of what people are up against," she said.
Labour's 2003 Gambling Act required local councils to develop policies on the location of new pokie machines in their districts, but venues that already had pokies when the law was introduced were granted a permanent exemption.
Problem Gambling Foundation chairman Richard Northey said about 10 councils, including Auckland, Manukau and Christchurch, had adopted the tightest policy allowed under the current law - a "sinking lid" which rules out any new venues and provides that venues that close will not be replaced.
Ms Bradford said the Greens and the Maori Party would push in coalition talks with the major parties after the election to give councils full powers to ban pokies from existing venues.
"I think if we make a really concerted push after the election, we might get somewhere," she said.