$500,000 less for gambling help

Gambling treatment services are facing their first funding cut since the liberalisation of gambling almost 20 years ago.

The two main services, the Problem Gambling Foundation and the Salvation Army's Oasis service, are believed to face cuts of almost $500,000 - $350,000 for the foundation and $130,000 for Oasis.

The cut is only about 3 per cent of the $17.7 million paid from a levy on the gambling industry this year for treatment and research.

But Problem Gambling Foundation chairman Richard Northey said it would be the first cut since the levy was established when poker machines were allowed into New Zealand in the early 1990s.

"The pokies" accounted for three-quarters of the 7388 people who sought help for problem gambling last year.

Mr Northey told the annual meeting of the Auckland District Council of Social Services yesterday that the treatment agencies were being asked to take "a substantial cut".

"One of the reasons the Government gave is so that the gambling industry has more to give out to community organisations," he said. But he said that idea was not valid "because the amount of the levy is such a small proportion of gambling proceeds that it wouldn't make any difference at all".

Pubs and clubs made $950 million from their pokies in 2007. They gave $353 million in community grants and paid $303 million in taxes, leaving net profits of $294 million.

Charity Gaming Association chief executive Francis Wevers said treatment and research levy was raised 50 per cent in 2006 and should be cut because it was not being used fully.

The increase came after spending on pokies rose more than five-fold to peak ot $1035 million in 2003-04. But it has dropped in all but one of the years since.