Gamble Free Day

Today around New Zealand is "Gamble free day", at Paroa Hotel we have 5 pokie machines. I have read an sad story in The Press today of a woman who gambled away her entire fortune, including her house. She is calling for pokie machines to be taken away from pubs. This is probably a fair statement from her considering what has happened to her. However I do believe that there is a need for gambling, I say this because if we wern't to have pokie machines in our hotel then it would be a great disadvantage to us because people would go to another venue where there are pokie machines. If pokie machines were taken out of circulation of all pubs then people would just start going to casino's and if they were taken from casino's then there would be another form of gambling that would step in place of pokie machines. It is in human nature to gamble and I don't think that a change will take away this need for people to gamble. There are many factors and preventable avenues that are placed in front of gamblers every time they step into a gaming room or play a pokie machine. These methods that are in place are helping to stamp out problem gambling and pokie machine turnover is decreasing rapidly. However there are a lot of people that enjoy going to a pub and putting an amount of money in a machine and seeing what happens, they get a thrill from it and if they win then great, they don't necessarily have a problem but see it as having a bit of fun, and there is still a need for this. Hotels also don't make much money at all from pokie machines, in fact most of the money goes to the government or back to the community. Personally I would like to see the pokie machines out of our hotel, the time effort and everything else that goes with pokie machines are not worth having them, however by not having them is detrimental to Paroa Hotel.