KEY POINTS:
Former poker machine addicts are banding together to get pokies banned from pubs and clubs.
Brenda McQuillan from Nelson and Robyn Hayward from Christchurch, both 46, told a gambling conference in Auckland yesterday that they became "obsessed" by pub pokies until they got help.
Ms Hayward is part of a "Consumer Voices" group which aims to get the pokies confined to licensed casinos.
"I would like to see them out of the pubs and in casinos only so you have to make a conscious decision to go there," she said.
Ms McQuillan, who represents "consumers" on the Government's gambling expert advisory group, said she "would like to see all pokie machines put into car crushers and used for scrap metal". But she agreed that the priority was to get them out of pubs.
The two women face an uphill battle after new figures showed that punters bet $2.4 billion last year in the country's 20,000 poker machines outside casinos, placing pub pokies above all except eight of the 24 spending categories in Statistics NZ's retail trade survey.
The industry earned a net $385 million for the pub charities which own the pokies, and netted the Government $331 million in taxes.
"We have to wean the Government off the money they get out of it," Ms McQuillan said.
She said she had no addiction problems of any kind until 1992, when she "met a bloke who played the pokies and fell in love with both".
At first she was able to keep it under control. But in 1996, when she was president of the students' association at Nelson Polytechnic, she started using her power as the association's cheque signatory to lend herself money to blow on the pokies.
In 1999, she was found guilty of stealing $8500 from the association and began to get counselling. But she relapsed the next year "even worse than before". By this time she and her partner had separated and she was on a sole parent's benefit looking after their daughter, who is now 14.
"I used to gamble between 9am and 3pm when my daughter was at school, on benefit day when I had cash and when I had cigarettes."
Ms Hayward said she also become addicted to the pokies even though the rest of her life was under control.
"I'm not a down-and-outer. I was brought up in the country in a Christian family with good morals and values. I was well educated, I was always a good saver. I've never had a problem with other addictions," she said.
"I have been addicted to pokies, I don't feel I'm addicted to gambling. I classify them like the drug 'P'."
Like Ms McQuillan, she had what she calls "a pleasure stage" for about five years when she could take $60 to gamble and leave when it was gone. "I would spend my mortgage money the night before it was due. I lost jobs. I started having anxiety attacks.
"My health went, I had chronic asthma. It came to the stage where my house was going to be gone. That was what stopped me - I didn't want to lose my house."
Ms Hayward said she used to ask people on the machines beside her, "If you could get rid of these things, would you?"
"Every gambler I have asked has said yes," she said. "It's amazing that the actual gamblers out there, especially the pokie ones, all want them gone."
* The consumers' group can be contacted through the Problem Gambling Foundation, 0800 664 262.
* 2007 TOP 10 SPENDS
Supermarkets/groceries$13.5b
New and used cars $8.5b
Petrol/fuel $6.2b
Restaurants/cafes $3.8b
Department stores $3.8b
Clothing $2.6b
Accommodation $2.6b
Appliances $2.5b
Pub/club pokies $2.4b
Recreational goods $2.35b
Sources: Statistics NZ, Problem Gambling Foundation.
