Posts by Russell Brown
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There's an incredible graph here of gaming machine numbers in New Zealand.
The number of machines doubled between 1999 and 2003, when the Gambling Act 2003 was passed. Since then, there's been a gradual decline in numbers.
The table for expenditure on non-casino pokies is even more striking.
That continued to increase until 2004 when it cracked the billion dollar mark -- a 10-fold increase from the introduction of pokies in 1991, a tripling from 1999, and an amazing half of all money gambled in New Zealand.
It's now also slowly declining, but it's not hard to see what the trend would have been had the government not put the clamp on in 2003.
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Dr Clive Robbins talks about the development of music therapy, which children it helps and why empathy is the key to its practice.
Dr Robbins, the co-founder of the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre,, was recently in New Zealand as a guest of the Raukatauri Music Therapy Trust, which offers both practice and training in music therapy.
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Nobody has to trust the veracity of what he's saying - this is the internet, after all - but it's an interesting thought experiment to consider the current situation from that perspective.
The police evidence from surveillance and intercepts is copious and detailed. I do think that regardless of the outcome of any eventual trial -- and some people who've seen evidence still doubt the likelihood of those implicated actually staging anything like terrorist action -- it will be impossible to justify or dismiss the actions of at least some of those charged.
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But seriously, I'm very glad to hear that things are looking up. I feel like I've helpfully intoned "ah, but you'll forget the hard times" so often that it even sounds trite and hollow to me.
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That Guardian story was terrible: I found myself counting the nuances it missed -- such as the "right-wing New Zealand First Party" being led by a Maori and having in recent memory held Maori seats. Would it not have helped to talk to Mark Solomon, Shane Jones, Georgina Te Heuheu or Rob McLeod as well as Margaret Mutu?
And then there were the blithe out-and-out errors like "the news that 17 Maori rights activists had been arrested on weapons and terrorism offences".
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PS: After 14 years, North Carolina has legislated a sinking lid -- to zero -- on pokies. The problems there have been such that the state Senate has passed such a measure five times since 2000 -- but each time the House, under the direction of (Democrat) Speaker Jim Black, refused to vote on it. The game was up when it emerged that Black was taking campaign contributions from ... guess which industry?
Once that was cleared up, the House voted 114-1 for the ban.
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You can't cure gambling by banning it. And you can't effectively ban it, either. Remove pokies in one place, they'll just go somewhere else. One less suburban pokies machine is one more loser at the casino. One less casino is just 10,000 more people playing it online and sending the money to the Nevada gaming commission. One less TAB is one more illegal bookie.
Ben, that's a complete load of crap. Pokies are a pernicious form of gambling specifically targeted at the people who can least afford it. There are 76 pokie dens in Manukau City alone, many of them right where people live -- or handily, alongside easy-credit shops -- and they take in an average $3m each a year.
The "charitable" trusts that operate the machines don't necessarily return the money back to the places they make it either: money extracted in Otara has literally been spent on a pony club in Remeura and water polo on the North Shore. Even where the trusts' operation isn't illegal, it's quite often an effective rort.
And it costs you and me money too. Non-casino pokies are the primary factor in between two thirds and three quarters of all problem gambling assessments in New Zealand (casino pokies account for another 17-20%). That comes out of the public health budget.
In the case of Maori women, about 85% of those who come to public health services cite pokies as their primary means of harmful gambling. These aren't people who are going to jump on their broadband connections and have a flutter online. They are people who might accidentally spend the family food money on the way home.
You and Rich are indulging yourselves with the fallacy that these things are a force of nature, have always been with us. But pokies were introduced by statute. The communities where they were established (or even the people who use them now) didn't lobby for the statutory change -- the putative industry around them did. You guys fancy that you're defending the right of people to play them -- you're not. You're defending the right of other people to extract money with devices built around powerful psychological principles.
Pokies could equally be removed by statute -- although a more practical option is probably local sinking-lid policies, where as pokie dens shut down, they aren't replaced.
Part of the problem with policy change is that the trusts can use the loot they make for political lobbying. You saw this when the bastard licensing trusts in West Auckland managed to convince people there not to vote for competition for liquor licences, using pokie money to run their campaign.
I'm pretty relaxed about most things consenting adults do. And most vices -- including your blog comments addiction and even other forms of gambling -- have redeeming features. I just don't think that's the case with pokies.
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Voila..
Ross Himona's company -- what a bummer for him. I used to deal with Ross when I was an IT journalist; very nice guy.
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The names of two men arrested in nationwide police raids last month who have been fighting to keep their identity secret can now be revealed.
They are Te Rangikaiwhiria Andrew Kemara, 38, and Tuhoe Francis Lambert, 58.
Kemara is "Cyber Hori", the guy who bought all the weapons and other military equipment on Trade Me. He's a former vice-chair of the Maori Internet Society and I think he's also a moderator of the maori.nz domain.
He has also argued on Kiwiblog, trivia fans ...
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It is not inconcievable to make pokies less addictive. They contain ROMs which I presume to be progammable ?
Ah. But then they wouldn't be so profitable ...
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