Every year, New Zealanders spend more than $1 billion on Lotto tickets. The profits go to community organisations, but what about the social costs?
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Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
When RNZ investigative reporter Guyon Espiner was writing the introduction for a story about the location of Lotto outlets, he made a point of using a descriptor not often applied to the crown entity: 'state-owned gambling company'.
"It was [a deliberate choice of words] on my behalf. I just wanted to be honest about this. I think we've curated this idea, and allowed ourselves...to see it as a completely benign game.
"It looks a bit different when you describe it for what it is: it's a state gambling company."
Lotto proudly declares all its profits are redistributed into the community in the form of lotteries grants, which support the creative arts, charities, churches, sports clubs, and community organisations of all shapes and sizes.
Since the first Saturday night draw in 1987, Lotto claims it's given out nearly $5 billion in grants.
It looks great on the surface, and it makes a certain sense: if you accept gambling will happen in a free society - and the evidence suggests it will - how about you regulate it, and ensure that the money that's lost goes to a good cause?
However, Espiner's five-part series details some tensions within this tacit social contract.
The location of stores, for example, which are disproportionately located in poor areas.
Lotto's desire to expand into the world of online gambling, specifically a proposed online bingo game, which some experts in the gambling sphere fear could disproportionately target Māori and Pasifika communities.
The lack of age restrictions - a quirk of the Gambling Act 2003, which regulates Lotto, and means anybody, even a child, can wander into a dairy and buy a ticket.
The marketing of the product, the annual cost running into the tens of millions, and which, when push comes to shove, is essentially a Crown entity encouraging people to gamble.
And, of course, where the money actually goes.
Espiner acknowledges this isn't a black-and-white story: many would gladly see Lotto as the undeniable villain, but Espiner says it's walking a fine line, with a remit to maximise profits while minimising harm - a tall order, with an inherent contradiction.
He says there's no easy solution here: much like pokies, and to an extent alcohol, a vast swathe of valuable community organisations have become entirely reliant on Lotto grants for their survival. Their existence would be jeopardised if Lotto were abolished - and there doesn't seem to be much appetite for that to actually happen.
But Espiner says his point wasn't to come up with a roadmap forward, but instead to prompt some soul-searching about these funding mechanisms, and the people who end up paying for them.
"You get to a different level when you start saturating communities with it, and massively promoting it ... and tying a community good to it. That's what we've done.
"They're saying, 'the more tickets we can sell, the more charities we can fund.' That's a pretty interesting logic, isn't it?
"I think we've got to have a look at that logic and go, 'are we comfortable with this?' Some people might be - but I think it's worth raising."
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