The Rawene Masonic Hotel. Photo / Supplied
A Far North pub is throwing out its pokie machines after a young mum left her baby alone outside the venue while gambling.
Rawene Masonic Hotel owner Glen Dick said it was not the first time children had been left alone while their parents played the pokies - there had been three or four previous incidents at the venue.
"None that young, but there have been young school kids left in cars outside."
The incident that led to the pokies decision happened last week, when a young woman entered the hotel wanting cash out to use the gaming machines.
A few minutes later, Dick heard crying and found a baby left outside the pub in a capsule.
When he asked who it belonged to, the woman came forward. Dick then asked her to leave.
"That sort of told us that we don't need them here anymore."
He posted on the hotel's Facebook page over the weekend that it would immediately stop being a gaming venue after the incident.
Comments on the Facebook post have been overwhelmingly supportive of the move.
"Well done it is an amazing and courageous step you have taken for your community and hopefully for more businesses to follow," one said.
Nga Manga Puriri manager and problem gambling practitioner Marino Murphy praised the Rawene Masonic Hotel's move to get rid of the machines.
"It's the right decision, I think it's awesome."
She said problem gambling was much more common than anyone realised.
"It's huge, it's bigger than big. And no one gets to hear about it until something like this happens."
The pokie machines have been unplugged and were awaiting removal.
This was not the first time a baby has been found unattended while a parent played pokies in Northland.
In 2008, a 10-month-old was found alone in a car while its mother was in Whangarei's Grand Hotel using the pokie machines. A passerby and a policeman had to break into the car to rescue the crying child. The mother was charged over the incident.
The amount Northlanders spend on pokies has been increasing recently, with $8 million spent on pokie machines in the region from January to March this year. Over the same period last year, Northlanders spent $7.2m on pokies.
The increase was particularly pronounced on the Far North, where spending increased by 4.7 per cent in one year, despite losing 10 pokie machines.
Murphy said the numbers were an indication the policy where new gaming machines were not allowed to replace any that had been removed was not working.
"We're hoping to develop something more robust to replace the sinking lid policy," she said.
She said Nga Manga Puriri would love a complete ban on pokies, but one major obstacle is that proceeds are also used for funding community groups.
"You have the other end of the spectrum where they're saying to us, 'We rely on that for our community funds'."
Dick estimated that 80 per cent of those using the pokies were unemployed and on benefits.
He said the closure of the local tertiary training institution last year only worsened the problem of unemployment in the district.
NorthTec announced its Rawene campus would be "rested" last December. The campus had 29 students and seven staff.
"I don't blame it on our community, I put a lot of it on the Government," Dick said.
He and his partner were unsure about having pokie machines to begin with when they took over the establishment last December.
"It was a bit rushed, the whole process of us signing papers for the machines."
The decision means a loss of income for the hotel, but Dick said they would manage, despite losing around $1000 a week from the pokies.
"We have looked at other avenues of replacing that," he said. "We'll get there."