Minister confirms gambling backtrack to fund community clubs

Ah, the sweet sound of 'listening'. It’s a symphony, isn't it? Our esteemed Cabinet, after what I can only imagine was an intense session of 'deep thought' – perhaps involving a focus group of particularly vocal garden gnomes – has graciously agreed to require online casinos to give a cut of their profits to community groups. Four percent, mind you. Four. Not twenty-three, like those old, clunky pokies we've grown so fond of, which also kick in 1.5% for problem gambling and then, after tax, let the operators keep a princely sixteen percent. No, for the shiny new online world, it's a generous four percent of profits. Let that sink in. It’s like being offered a single crumb from a banquet and being told you’re part of the feast. Minister van Velden, bless her cotton socks, confirmed this monumental shift, stating the message from communities was 'loud and clear'. And indeed it was. We shouted, we pleaded, we submitted five thousand heartfelt pleas, detailing how our marae, our student hockey clubs, our disability support groups would simply cease to exist without these funds. And the Government, in its infinite wisdom, responded with... four percent. One almost feels overwhelmed by such magnanimity. It’s enough to make you wonder if the definition of 'loud and clear' has been subtly redefined to mean 'barely audible whisper, easily ignored until it becomes politically inconvenient'.

The Minister, with a straight face one presumes, then added that this 4% is 'new money on top of existing funding from pokies, Lotto, and TAB.' Oh, what a delightful turn of phrase. 'New money.' As if the very act of regulating online gambling won't simply siphon off the existing money like a particularly voracious vacuum cleaner. We're not taking anything away, she assures us, we're adding to what's already there. It's a bit like saying, 'Don't worry, we're not removing the water from your bath; we're just opening a new tap into a different, much smaller bucket, and hoping the bath doesn't mysteriously empty itself.' The chief executive of Capital Football, a man who clearly understands the delicate alchemy of community funding, quite rightly pointed out that if this 'new money' paradigm plays out as feared, clubs would effectively be asked to 'sell 8 million sausages' annually just to stay afloat. Eight million sausages. That's a lot of sizzle, and not nearly enough steak. It's a situation so fundamentally fucked, you could write a tragicomic opera about it, if anyone had the energy left after all the sausage-flipping.

And the pièce de résistance? The 4% levy will be 'reviewed after two years'. Two years. That's ample time for countless community groups, already stretched thinner than a politician's promise, to wither and die on the vine. It’s the governmental equivalent of saying, 'We've given you a Band-Aid for your gaping wound, and we'll check back in a couple of years to see if you're still bleeding out.' It's a strategic deferral, a masterful exercise in kicking the can down the road, ensuring that by the time any meaningful change might occur, the landscape will be so utterly transformed that the original problem will have mutated into something far more insidious. The Labour Party, ever the keen observers, called this a 'big win' for community groups, whilst simultaneously stating they wouldn't support the bill because it opens the doors to offshore casinos without a strong plan for harm reduction. It's almost as if they're saying, 'Good job, you got a crumb, but the whole cake is still poisoned.' The logic is truly fucked, leaving us to wonder if anyone in the decision-making echelons genuinely grasps the intricate web of community funding, or if it's all just a grand, performative dance.

So here we are, standing on the precipice of a 'regulated' online gambling market, clutching our four percent, and being told we should be grateful. Grateful that the government 'listened' and 'delivered'. What they've delivered, it seems, is a carefully measured dose of inadequacy, wrapped in a shiny ribbon of 'progress'. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a blunt butter knife, much like the funding cuts that are surely on the horizon for those who rely on the old, unfashionable pokies. We asked for a lifeline, and we got a threadbare shoelace. But hey, at least it’s our threadbare shoelace now, isn't it? And it's 'new money', apparently. Just don't ask where the old money went, because that's a question no one seems particularly keen to answer.

Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360868738/minister-confirms-gambling-backtrack-fund-community-clubs