Nelson City Council votes no to ‘sinking lid’ for Nelson pokies

Nelson City Council has voted to remain with its current gambling venues policy, rejecting a ‘sinking lid’ policy.

Following a three-year review of the Gambling Venues Policy 2018, councillors voted in support of council staff recommendations on Thursday, despite fervent opposition from some councillors.

This Gambling Venues Policy relates to gaming machines or ‘pokies’ and the restriction of new gaming machines coming into Nelson.

In the last policy review in 2018, restrictive rules were put in place for pokies. These included capping machine numbers in Nelson from 273 to 162, limiting machines in new venues from nine to five, and zoning restrictions on new venues. This meant a machine could not operate 100 metres from ATMs or community and family-focussed facilities.

In 2018, the inclusion of a ‘sinking lid’ policy was considered but not approved.
A sinking lid policy would mean that once a pokie venue closes, the council would not issue any other group a licence to replace that venue.

Brenda McQuillan, from a Ministry of Health advisory group preventing and minimising gambling harm, told council about her own lived experience with gambling.

Brenda’s addictive relationship with gambling begun in 1992 and said it was not long before she was gambling away money she could not afford.

“For me, it was rock bottom and yet I still continued to gamble,” she said.

Brenda went on to explain the harm gambling had had on herself and her whanau.

“You guys do have a lot of power and I really hope you look at the sinking lid,” she told councillors.

Mayor Rachel Reese spoke in support of the staff’s recommendation to retain the policy without any change.

She said council staff had carefully weighed up the current policy and saw the policy as being effective as it was.

“The recommendation is that it remains unchanged as it is working as intended. Making additional changes based on the numbers we are seeing, change won’t have the effect we are after,” said Rachel.

The staff report highlighted that Nelson is in line with national trends of gambling spending that is increasing over recent years, despite there being a decrease from 11 to nine venues since 2018.

Councillor Rohan O’Neill Stevens raised an opposing recommendation to see a ‘sinking lid’ policy adopted by the council.

Rohan said there was an “aspect of symbolism” to his motion.

“We know pokie machines represent a very clear transfer of wealth. It is often those who are sucked in by them, members of our lowest income communities, while the recipients of pokie machine profits are usually put into better-off communities."

According to 2020 data from the Problem Gambling Foundation, the country's sport groups receive 54 per cent of machine funds while health/welfare groups receive 10 per cent and community groups receive 20 per cent of possible funding.

Rachel spoke against this motion, stating policies in place are restrictive enough and the adoption of a sinking lid would make “a very big piece of work” that would achieve “very little outcomes” in harm reduction and would put on hold other council works.

“I don’t think it will make any meaningful difference,” said Rachel.

Despite opposition from councillors Matt Lawrey, Rohan O’Neill Stevens, Pete Rainey, Rachel Sanson and Tim Skinner, the council voted to not adopt a sinking lid policy.

Council voted to keep the cap of 162 machines, though did vote to add a clause that would prompt the council to consult on a sinking lid clause at the next review.