Views Across The “Ditch”

Harm Prevention In New Zealand

Chairperson of the GIS (NSW) Kate Roberts recently spent two weeks in Wellington accompanying her 16 yr old son on school work experience to Peter Jackson’s Weta Special Effects Studio. So whilst he was exploring the inner workings of animation she used the time to do some exploring of her own—with equal envy and excitement... This is her personal account.

I recently enjoyed the great privilege of accompanying my son on a special work experience project to Weta’s animations studios and was thrilled to watch him relish this wonderful opportunity, to stretch his imagination, experience some real professionalism in his field of interest and bring back some new ideas for his passion.

My own journey into the NZ problem gambling prevention and harm minimisation strategies whist I was there left me with parallel thoughts and feelings. Currently exploring PhD research opportunities in the field of public health approaches to gambling, I was keen to meet with some key people in the field and had lined up some visits to significant stakeholders piror to my arrival. As many of you would know, we were supported this year in Responsible Gambling Awareness Week by the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand with our keynote speaker at the seminar in Sydney on May 7th- John Stansfield CEO. He had offered an open invitation if ever I was in NZ and I was keen to meet his colleagues in Wellington.

I’d like to say a great thank you to Adrianne Transome the team leader of the Central Region, for her welcome and time dedicated to hosting me. I enjoyed several hours of discussion about our relevant interests and was invited to join their regional meeting for day. She arranged some pertinent interviews with the social marketing group HSC who are responsible mass media advertising of problem gambling issues across the Country which includes their impressive Kiwi Lives production (see comment later this article).

The PG Foundation of NZ is a good example of a counselling treatment service shifting paradigm into the public health approach to gambling, So whilst traditionally it started as a primarily counselling service and indeed is the largest PG counselling service in the Southern hemisphere, it takes a public health approach to gambling issues. This means it is equally dedicated to developing protection, prevention and early intervention strategies. Activities include working with consumers to develop community actions strategies, lobbying, skills training for those affected and some pretty amazing public awareness raising campaigns including No pokies Day and whilst I was there they were planning their Guinness Book of Records attempt to drop four pokie machines out of a Helicopter (you can see this on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjjOQRETiN8 ).

The EGM scene in NZ is quite different from NSW with the majority of machines (all non– casino EGM’s) being owned by Trusts (mainly alcohol related corporations) these Trusts own the machines and site them primarily in hotels (which previously had a maximum 18 and new have reduced this to 10). Hotel owners are paid a site fee and pokie profits are divided three ways:1/3 to the Trust, 1/3 to the Government and 1/3 to the community—in fact gambling can only legally exist in NZ for the “benefit of the community”. What this means in practise is that many of the welfare/community agencies are directly funded by these Trust funds—which as you can imagine can be prove challenging when trying to raise awareness about social responsibility issues.

Local government is also more involved in the planning and licensing for poker machines having to develop policies on numbers in their community and licensing venues to carry them. These policies and licenses have to be reviewed every three years. This has lead to a mixed approach to gambling across the Country with some councils taking a pretty neutral stand and other developing a “sinking lid”‘ policy whereby as machines are forfeited through venue closures etc no new machines are allowed to be brought in.. Therefore reducing numbers over time (indeed New Zealand has reduced it number of pokies from it initial 26,800 to the current 22,000).

This Sinking lid policy had drawn particular attention recently in Christchurch where the PG Foundation had actively lobbied the community to take up the issue and encouraged them to really consider whether they wanted more pokies in their community or did they want the council to adopt a “sinking lid policy”. Their community awareness raising efforts led to over 2,000 submissions from the community to the local council and the result of endorsement of a “sinking lid' policy. Power of people action was evident so much so, it took industry by surprise and by all accounts they have employed a professional lobbyist to attend every council review in NZ to avoid such a “calamity “ from their perspective ever occurring again– we shall see!

The Health Sponsorship Council—was my next port of call meeting Theresa Pomeroy, Manager Problem Gambling.

The HSC is a NZ government agency that promotes health and healthy lifestyles. They do this by delivering health promotion and marketing programs including campaigns around tobacco control, healthy eating, sun safety and were commissioned in 2006 by the Ministry of Health to develop programs on problem gambling (refer www.hsc.org.nz ). HSC has developed a strategic approach to preventing and minimising harm from problem gambling from 2007—20010 guided by a specific framework and plan , to match the NZ government’s strategic plan on problem gambling. The guiding principles include:

A Public Health Approach

A focus on reducing the incidence and impact of gambling harm in New Zealand

Reducing inequities by adopting:

-a determinant perspective (changing social structures and specific behaviours)

- focussing on priority groups: Maori, Pacific People, Asian people, those at risk form gambling harms, and people from low sociol economic backgrounds.

Treaty of Waitangi. Maori have inherent right to be involved in decisions making and end users. Meaningful partnerships should be established with Maori organisatons. HSC programs should actively protect Maori from external influences that encourage or expose Maori to gambling harm.

The public health goals of their approach is to:

Denormalise harmful gambling by getting society to understand and questions the issues.

Prevent gambling related problems in individuals and groups at risk of addiction.

Protect vulnerable groups from gambling related harms.

Reduce harm by preventing and minimising the adverse health , social and economic consequences for individuals, families, community and society.

This is a population approach taking the starting point as the total community as opposed to an individual’s problem—a far cry from the Australian gambling industry's preferred Reno Model—where the focus is placed primarily on identifying and treating problem gamblers with a view of non-interventionism for the rest of the community.

The latest HSC problem gambling mass marketing campaign called Kiwi Lives is a strategy to develop awareness about problem gambling issues across the community. It is a series of promotions across television and radio ( you can sees this online at http://www.ourproblem.org.nz/ourcommunities.html)

Once again taking a public health approach, the key message is “problem gambling—our people, our families, our problem” .In contrast to the “Reno Model” of community awareness which focuses only on those who have already developed a problem, this campaign is about getting to grips with prevention at an individual, family and community level—impressive!

In fact in general I found the NZ community had greater awareness of problem gambling issues and much of this must be put down to the government’s efforts in consulting with their community about gambling (refer Gambling Reform NZ discussion paper, DIA, NZ ) and the fact that there is major advertising on television—one morning over a bowl of cornflakes I counted 6 adverts (in 1/14 hrs) on the commercial TV station I was watching promoting the problem gambling helpline. The message ‘Do you or someone you care about have a gambling problem’ was unsensational, poignant and clear. When was the last time you saw a G-line advert in NSW- about 3 1/2 years ago!! In addition, outside a major shopping centre we saw huge billboards promoting the same massage. This is serious promotion of help services as opposed to the majority of our NSW help service operating in a vacuum of mass marketing support.

Next stop—the Department of Internal affairs and meeting with John Markland, Manager Gaming, Racing, & Censorship policy and his colleague Michael Osmond, Senior Policy Analyst. Joy on joy when I am corrected for talking about harm minimisation by John who points out “ but here we’re not just about harm minimisation, we are talking prevention” and this from the regulatory body (similar to our OLGR).

Both John and Michael outlined the major strengths of their prevention and harm minimisation policies along with explaining the formula by which all gambling activities contribute to treatment programs—the levy set based on numbers presenting to treatment related to that form of gambling. This is a department with teeth—having closed the Dunedin Casino for two days determining that it was not appropriate to have responsible gambling policies and then not implement them after a major PG case came to light. It was also interesting to hear that self exclusion order have accountabilities for both the venue and the person who gambles if there is a breach—gambler fined $500, venue $10,000 (a brief summary of the key policies can be seen at http://ttcf.org..nz where this has been broken down by one of the gaming machine charitable trusts). The NZ government has taken a strong public health approach to gambling encapsulated in their 2003 Gambling Act and anyone interested in this approach would benefit from having a good look at some o f their initiatives. Further details can be found at www.dia.govt.nz.

The Ministry of Health was my final port of call and a meeting with—Dean Adams—Senior Contract Manager, Problem Gambling & mental Health Group, Population Health Directorate. Dean explained how the split between treatment and regulation had occurred and the fact that responsibility for all health promotion, treatment, early intervention, social marketing and research for problem gambling was located within the Population Directorate of the Ministry for Health. This clear division (unlike NSW where all sits within the Office of Liquor Gaming & Racing) enables the focus on population approaches to benefit from health backgrounds & expertise in this field, yet at the same time develop a working relationship with the DIA who are responsible for regulation policy. This is a relatively new department and as such they are developing a range of strategies, along with working with the HSC and the various NGO counselling programs around the country. Of particular interest was the current move to skill up generalist community health staff in problem gambling issues and develop screening tools to assist them identify people who may be at risk in their communities.

There is so much more to say but no space to say it. I hope you got the feel of it, worth every minute and thanks to all who took the time to meet with me—it was inspirational!

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