“We often get a rise in referrals as a result [during] this period,” says David Cooms, Communications Director, Problem Gambling Foundation.
Problem gambling causes family breakdown, child neglect, poverty and crime, he said. It is also the single most important cause of theft by employees from community-based organisations
The Gambling Act, 2003, allows for just under 20,000 pokie machines across New Zealand, but there is a disproportionate number in poorer areas, says the Gambling Foundation. The poorest communities with the most vulnerable people are the source for most of the pokies money.
The industry has long identified that people on low wages are more apt to gamble to escape drudgery and to potentially elevate one's living standards.
There is a legal requirement under the Gambling Act for gambling venues to identify problem gamblers and to intervene, Mr Cooms said. But levels of compliance vary across the country.
“For example there was a case of a pub owner in Napier, just recently who excluded a gambler from a TAB machine and then the TAB threatened the pub owner to remove the machine because the takings had gone down so much from that one player.”
Bayview Hotel Manager, Isobel Creswell, was subsequently given a community award to recognise her stance against problem gambling.
Earlier this year, Problem Gambling Foundation Chief Executive Officer, Graeme Ramsey, said there were few ethical considerations around the distribution of monies raised through gambling.
Mr Ramsey was referring to a Sunday Star Times article that exposed a complicated system that linked four trotting clubs, a finance company, a pub management business and pokie trusts.
The scheme was designed to get around provisions of the Gambling Act that prohibit pub owners from influencing decisions on the distribution of pokie funds.
"Using gambling to fund more gambling could hardly fall into that category. Racing gets $1.8 million a month of pokie funding," Mr Ramsey said.
The foundation feels that the financially pressed community organisations have every right to feel aggrieved at such schemes.
The Department of Internal Affairs reports that $945 million was lost on pokies outside casinos in 2007. They estimate that 10.2 percent of adults who are legally able to play pokies do so, which means that in the last year they lost on average $2762 per person.