The owners of a Northland hotel are standing by their claims that a woman left her baby outside their venue while she gambled, the couple's lawyer says.
Photo: RNZ
Last week, the owners of the Rawene Masonic Hotel let punters know on its Facebook page they would no longer be providing the gaming machines after the incident, and hoped their community would be supportive of its decision.
This week, gaming trust Pub Charity's chief executive Martin Cheer cast doubt on the owners' claims - saying he reviewed CCTV footage from the gaming lounge and found no evidence to say the incident happened.
Barrister David Garrett, who is acting for hotel owners Glen Dick and Lana Turnbull, said his clients were adamant a baby was left alone.
"The first thing I did when I got here this morning was ask them to give me the tour, show me where the gaming room was, show me where he found the baby - there's no cameras out there - and Glen's explanation to me seems perfectly plausible, frankly," Mr Garrett said.
However, Mr Cheer has said there was no evidence to prove this.
"We operate CCTV in the venue for multiple reasons but that gave me the opportunity to have a look at what had actually occured," Mr Cheer said.
"So, we went and looked at the day in which Mr Dick claimed this occured and didn't see anything in the footage which was consistent with what he claimed had happened."
Mr Cheer said the gaming trust had turned the hotel's pokie machines off - five days before the owner said they were turned off - because the couple failed to bank cash from the pokies on time.
The hotel owners maintain they requested the machines to be deactivated following the incident and weren't deactivated by the trust any earlier, Mr Garrett said.
Earlier the owners did say they were late banking pokie machine money on two occasions, but both had perfectly acceptable explanations, he said.
"One was a misunderstanding between Glen and Lana over who was supposed to do it, so it was 24 hours late, and the other was Lana injured herself and the banking was done 36 or 48 hours late," Mr Garrett said.