In the Auckland-Manukau area, for example, $970,910 was redistributed into the area from the pokie turnover from just two bars, Happy Days in Manukau and Tactics Sports Bar, Highland Park.
Both claim 18 machines, Happy Days advertising "a high comfort modern gaming experience featuring 18 of the latest technology machines ... " Its advertising claims to have raised $1.5 million in the past 12 months.
Exactly how much goes through these two bars is unclear. Gambling regulations only require 37.12 per cent of gross proceeds to be redistributed for charitable purposes. In addition, the source of $4.5 million donations to national causes over the past six months such as the Arthritis Foundation ($350,000), NZ Symphony Orchestra ($100,000), Spirit of Adventure Trust ($500,000) is not identified.
Mr Cheer is upset at the "willingness of [Auckland Council] politicians to throw a charitable model of funding distribution under a bus while extolling the virtues of private ownership and profits going to shareholders".
His concern seems to be that the council will reduce the number of pokie machines from local pubs and support an increase in machines at the casino.
Certainly the council is working on introducing a unified "sinking lid" on poker machines across the region, but as far as I can ascertain, this isn't part of a deal to allow more at the casino, just a continuing concern for their proliferation through poor communities.
Like the tobacco bosses, Mr Cheer avoids the health issue that dogs his industry and is driving the council's "sinking lid" policy. He's not the only one. All of us who enjoy the fruits of the handouts from the cash laundered through the pubs and bars of the land - disproportionately concentrated in the poorer communities - turn a blind eye as well.
A report received by Auckland Council last month, Community Funding: A focus on Gaming Grants, estimated Auckland cultural, sporting and recreational groups collected around $55 million in pokie grants in 2011. Of the 182 organisations that responded to the survey, 76 per cent didn't believe anyone in their organisation had concerns or were uncomfortable about the source of funds. Half saw it as an easy way of getting money and about the same proportion said they wouldn't survive without it.
The report did record that around half admitted "there was a moral dilemma in taking the funding. Key concerns were the impact of gambling harm on the community, and some were concerned that the money was being taken out of the communities in which it was generated, which were among the poorest communities".
Two years ago, the former chief executive of the Community Gaming Association, Francis Wever, wrote to the Minister of Internal Affairs claiming that corrupt behaviour in his own industry was "all-pervasive and pernicious" with "endemic non-compliance".
This year we read of how the Otago Rugby Union bought three South Auckland pubs then siphoned $5 million in pokie profits out of the areas - mainly Manurewa - to help prop up the failing Dunedin sporting body.
What's protecting the pokie industry from reform is that it props up respectable New Zealand.
Everything from grand opera to Girl Guides to pony clubs to play centres to women's refuges, rely on pub gamblers continuing to feed their hard-earned cash into these bottomless machines.
