Too much at stake for racing industry without pokie money?

It is hard to believe the racing industry’s viability would be threatened without pokie money says David Coom, Communications Director at the Problem Gambling Foundation.

According to Tony Bird’s opinion piece in the Taranaki Daily News, 27 June 2009, if pokie machine money can’t fund horse racing stake money, the racing industry could become unviable.

Mr Bird was commenting on a supplementary order paper lodged in Parliament by Sue Bradford proposing removing the right to use pokie machine money for racing stake money.

David Coom says the New Zealand horse racing industry is a well established and proud industry so it is incredibly hard to believe they would be threatened if they couldn’t access pokie community grant money.

“In fact, the industry does itself a huge disservice by taking the pokie money as it has usually been lost by problem gamblers in communities that can least afford it,” he says.

Mr Coom believes most New Zealand industries have had to adapt to surviving without subsidies and no more so than the agriculture sector industries. So why racing should be exempt and be a special case is a historical anachronism that should be stopped.

Of the approximately $300million that is paid out in community grants from the $900 million of pokie proceeds, $21 million is granted to racing codes primarily for prize money.

Mr Coom believes this is a significant problem with the current Gambling Act and needs to be rectified.

“Funding gambling in horse racing from money lost on the pokies seems blatantly wrong on several counts. Firstly, proceeds from pokies are more often than not generated by problem gamblers from poor areas. At worst, you would hope that these proceeds should be returned to these communities, not siphoned off to a major business like racing. Secondly, the Act talks about ‘charitable purposes’ as being recipients of pokie grant money. For most New Zealanders this would not mean funding another form of gambling,” he says.

Mr Coom urges the Government to take note and support the issues raised by Sue Bradford’s proposal in the interests of funding in the community sector.

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