Council gives nod to gambling application
Aotearoa Gaming Trust Incorporated submitted an application over a month ago to run up to nine gaming machines and establish a TAB venue as part of an existing tavern in Ballarat St.
The application was presented to the council on Thursday, prompting a discussion among councillors as to whether it should be turned down to reduce gambling sites in the city and minimise their negative impacts.
The report presented to the council during its monthly meeting recommended that consent be declined.
One of the main reasons for this recommendation was due to a district-wide policy dictating that gambling venues cannot be within 50m of each other.
The policy was reviewed last year under the Gambling Act by the council which had put in place the 50m rule as a way to reduce the harm of gambling.
However, it was not made clear in the policy if the 50m would be measured from the edge of the licensing area or from the store front.
As part of its application, the gaming trust indicated the distance between the tavern and the SkyCity Casino is about 56m.
The report presented to the council chose to measure the distance from door to door, which was about 48m.
The argument made to the council was that the issue of distance was enough grounds to decline the application and in doing so, support harm minimisation.
Councillor Niki Gladding defended the decision to approve the consent.
She said distance alone was not enough to decline the application and left room for the applicant to challenge the council's decision through a judicial review, a process that would come at a cost to the rate payers.
"I'm not a fan of gambling. It's just simply that we have to be fair," she said.
"If we've got a policy and people are operating within the policy, then we can't decline this because we don't like gambling."
Melissa White was one of three councillors to vote in favour of declining the consent as she hoped to uphold the intentions of the policy to reduce gambling sites.
"I know that the intent of the policy was not to increase the amount of gambling, and it was to limit it," she said.
". . . it comes down to the policy not being clear how that 50m is defined. I chose to define it as in a radius from the current one, and others chose not to."
With only three votes against granting the consent, the application will go through to the next stage of the consenting process.
rawan.saadi@odt.co.nz
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