Hundreds of people who live in the Northland Region of New Zealand seem to be spending millions on poker machines on an annual basis. What is worse, most of them usually go through a crisis due to increasing debts that pile up as a result of their gambling habits.
As recently revealed by Casino Guardian, The Māori and Pacific population not only spend a lot on gambling, and especially on so-called pokies, but are also at the highest risk of becoming problem gamblers. According to some figures released by the Department of Internal Affairs, the residents of Northland spent an overall amount of NZ$8.4 million on poker machines over the second quarter of 2018, which represents an increase of approximately NZ$440,000 in comparison to their spending over the first three months of the current year.
In contrast, the number of gaming machines and gambling venues across Northland was reduced, which comes to prove that poker machine players were spending more money on their gambling habit. As revealed by the Department of Internal Affairs, the overall number of pokies in Northland in the period from April to June 2018 was reduced from 630 to 623, while the number of gambling venues fell from 49 to 48.
Local gamblers, however, spent more money on controversial poker machines. The second quarter of 2018 saw Whangārei players spend NZ$4.2 million on pokies, in comparison to NZ$3.8 million spent in the first quarter. Gamblers in the Far North spent NZ$3.5 million from April to June, which was pretty much the same amount they spent on pokies in the first three months of the year. Kaipara residents, on the other hand, also boosted their pokie spending from NZ$706,673 in the first quarter to more than NZ$715,000 in the second one.
Woman Loses Family Home Due to Gambling Addiction
The gambling addiction cost a Northland resident a lot when her family was forced to move out of their home due to her spending NZ$1,000 per night. The woman, who lives in Whangārei and who is deliberately left unnamed, sought some help for the gambling addiction about a couple of years ago. She had been a gambler for pretty much her whole life but her gambling habit became a real problem about a year and a half before she sought any help.
Both she and her husband worked but they were still unable to make ends meet because of her addiction to pokies. The woman herself has revealed that she would sometimes spend NZ$1,000 per a single night while playing on the machines and she often borrowed money from friends and family to fuel her gambling habits, while not paying any bills. This is how she left the power bill reach a four-figure sum and the rent unpaid for three months.
Wini Frood, the acting manager of the NGA Manga Puriri Northland Problem Gambling Services revealed that the woman actually got excluded from venues offering poker machines in Northland for two years. Still, despite the exclusion and the spiralling debts, which made she and her family move to Auckland to live in a caravan park for more than half a year before returning to Northland, the woman has not managed to fully quit gambling.
- Author
Daniel Williams
