Tuesday, 13 April 2021, 6:35 am When local authorities tighten gambling regulations, player losses at the pokie machines are reduced. Around 10 percent of the New Zealand population is impacted by problem gambling. Those impacts include poor health, psychological distress, financial difficulties and strained interpersonal relationships. AUT’s NZ Work Research Institute (NZWRI) has just released a report, “Capping problem gambling in NZ: the effectiveness of local government policy intervention”. Commissioned in 2020 by the Ministry of Health, the report compared the outcomes of communities that adhered to the minimum requirements of the Gambling Act of 2003 and those that put in place stricter regulations. The Act limited the number of pokie