Pokies and God: How religious groups make dirty money clean

Saturday, 20 April 2019

While most religions condemn gambling, Sikh and Christian groups still accepted millions of dollars in pokie money last year. Muslim groups won't touch it, but their moral call comes at a cost. Amanda Saxton reports.

The proceeds of pokie machines have long been seen as fruit from a poisoned tree by religious groups, who often happen to be financially strapped.

It's a dilemma: take money from the class 4 gaming trusts that own pokies – New Zealand's main, most accessible source of community funding – and join a morally skew-wiff system, or risk stagnation for lack of moolah.

​Ikhlaq Kashkari of the New Zealand Muslim Association says our community funding model punishes groups for sticking to their principles. Gambling is considered haram in Islam – forbidden by Allah. Funds generated from haram activities are equally frowned upon, so Muslim groups simply do not apply for pokie money.

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But there's a raft of projects Kashkari wants to get off the ground. Culturally appropriate safe houses for victims of domestic violence, a beefing up of security at mosques around the country in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, and programmes to keep elderly Muslims active, to name a few.

These sorts of community-centric initiatives are exactly what pokie money is there for. The Lion Foundation, one of 35 gaming trusts in New Zealand, granted women's refuges and elder care services around the country a collective $100,000 each over the year ended March 2018. More than 60 of its grants were made to groups with a Christian denomination in their name.

Sikh organisations received almost 90 grants from the BlueSky Community Trust, another gaming trust, between January 2018 and January 2019.

Kashkari says Muslim groups are at a disadvantage because 'there isn't an ethical alternative for funding in New Zealand'.

'Anything that we do, any services we need to provide or any development, we have to fund it from our own pocket. This makes it very difficult when needs suddenly arise.'

POKIES AREN'T GOING AWAY

The Department of Internal Affairs' website links to a National-era booklet named Pokie Proceeds: Building Strong Communities. It showcases grant recipients turning troubled south Auckland youths' lives around through rugby, fixing an epilepsy assist dog's broken leg, and rebuilding a beloved theatre after the Canterbury earthquakes. It strongly implies none of this would have been possible without people sticking their coins into pokie machines.

DIA data show pokies reaped $895 million for the 2017/18 financial year. The law requires community groups get at least 40 per cent of that money. Pokie proceeds have been climbing steadily since 2014, despite sinking lid policies of various districts meaning numbers of machines are slowly going down. 

Each gaming trust acknowledges the damage pokie machines do, and lists ways they try to combat gambling. Critics say this isn't enough. The machines are designed to be addictive, and researchers have found the psycho-sensory experience of using one gives a dopamine rush similar to that of a cocaine hit.

The Problem Gambling Foundation says the time and money spent in dark pokie dens destroys families and work ethics. There is evidence the industry preys on the vulnerable. Most of Auckland's 3259 pokie machines are clustered in its low socio-economic south, which also houses high numbers of Māori and Pacific Islanders – who the Problem Gambling Foundation says are over three times more likely to become problem gamblers than the average adult.

'HUSH MONEY'

The Anglican Diocese of Christchurch voted to stop its local parishes applying for grants from gaming trusts back in 2013. At the time, Reverend Jolyon White said the ban was 'a matter of principle' and called the funds 'hush money'.

He said the Diocese believed accepting such funds limited its ability to speak out against pokie machines and the harm they cause communities.

When Stuff contacted the Diocese to check if the ban was still in place, a spokeswoman confirmed it was.

But a list of the Lion Foundation's approved grant applications showed thousands of dollars were granted to the Hokitika Parish and the Parish of Upper Riccarton – both within the Christchurch Diocese – between April 2017 and March 2018.

When asked how two of its parishes had managed to skirt the ban, the Diocese replied with a revised statement saying its call in 2013 was 'an expectation, not a requirement'.

'Parishes are able to make their own choices according to their conscience,' it read.

Upper Riccarton's vicar Nick Mountford's conscience allowed him to accept $12,000 from gaming societies to help rebuild St Peter's Church after it was damaged during the Canterbury earthquakes.

The 1876 stone church is a historically significant building needing $2.5 million for its restoration.

'Gaming societies provide a small part of the total fundraising, but we are grateful for their help,' Mountford says.

'Our decision-making committee was reluctant to judge the pub charities given their willingness to help us with such an enormous task, and the expectations of the community that this money goes to worthwhile causes.'

A QUANDARY

South Auckland minister Peter Williamson says he is conflicted on whether religious groups, perceived by society as moral beacons, should use pokies money. But he is certain they're forced to make that call from within a morally flawed system.

'It's the government and its predecessors that have set up a funding model where virtually only gambling money is available to charitable bodies,' he says. 'A funding model that relies on people losing money at gambling is a model that is broken.'

His own church, the Crossroads Methodist Church in Papakura, does not apply for gaming trust grants. He says that's because it undermines trust in God by 'encouraging superstition and certainly greed' and proceeds from the industry are therefore tainted.

Crossroads runs a budgeting service and weekly free dinner for those in financial straits; Williamson says people who've gambled away their rent and food money turn up to both, week after week. He acknowledges the awkward position a budgetting advisor whose organisation relied on pokies money to operate could find themselves in when counselling clients to stop gambling.

'I don't believe the church can divorce itself from the chain of where money comes from and how it's used,' he says.

Williamson's church can afford to take the moral high road, however. It owns a substantial chunk of Papakura, so doesn't need pokie money to fund its projects.

'We're really just lucky that our forebears had the vision to buy land,' he admits. 'The church down the road has no owned property and they really struggle.'

Hence Williamson's conflict. 'Some organisations believe it is the money of last resort and I can't argue with that,' he says.

'MONEY IS A TOOL'

A few kilometres further south, at a gaudy golden Gurdwara, the Supreme Sikh Society is happy to showcase projects it funds with pokie money.

It's already built a two-storey kindergarten. Seven community sports fields, which will cost more than $3 million, are underway for completion by the end of the year. The nine-acre property is also being prepared for use as a civil defence evacuation base.

Last year, the Supreme Sikh Society was granted more than $1.5 million in pokie grants.

When it bought the Papakura land in the early 2000s, it was uneven and rocky – 'just sitting there' – the society's secretary Rajinder Singh says.

'We wanted to do something that would help people. A lot of schools don't have sports fields of their own, for example. But we didn't have enough money to develop the land ourselves, so we went to the trusts.'

First they went to the council, Singh says, but got told there wasn't enough in the coffer. The Sikhs were advised repeatedly to apply to gaming trusts.

'If we didn't approach them we would never be able to do all this.'

Gambling is forbidden in Sikhism, and Sikh priests preach against it inside the Gurdwara. The faith's founder Guru Nakak told his followers not to gamble due to its 'bad consequences', Singh says.

Asked if there wasn't therefore an ethical conflict in using pokie proceeds, Signh says no. He doesn't agree with the reverend Williamson that money's source and purpose are inextricable.

Singh uses publicly funded services as an example: 'taxes go into one box so how can we know when we use the hospital or roads or schools, whether money's come from cigarettes, gambling or alcohol?'

'Money is a tool and when you have it sitting somewhere, you either use it or you waste it. That fund is available, so we will use it and use it wisely.'

FROM A GOOD PLACE

John Bishop is a philosophy professor at Auckland University and says the ethics of laundering dirty money through good deeds is a perennial grey area.

He says each group, with imperfect information, makes calculations about the amount of good both using and rejecting pokie money achieves – and acts accordingly.

'But knowing exactly what weight to give participation in a system that ought to be curtailed – or the opportunity cost of not doing good where you could – is tricky,' Bishop says.

'I think we have to respect the fact different people come to different conclusions. They can all be coming from a good place.'

He acknowledges, however, that harder stances are needed to get a community funding model friendlier towards groups morally opposed to using money from pokies.

Kashkari says he's brought the issue up with successive governments over the years, but has never been offered a solution. A spokesperson for the DIA says it has no plans to phase out pokie machines.