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Message from our Gambling Director
Kia ora koutou,
The launch of our strategy last year signalled a renewed regulatory approach for the Gambling regulator. You will see below that we are making some changes to the way we do things and tidying up some areas of our practice. Good regulatory stewardship and practice is at the core of our new strategy, and is the theme driving many changes we will be making. Some of these may be changes to practices that have been in place for some time.
We understand that any change can have impact - sometimes unintended. We will do our best to make sure any changes we implement are thoroughly considered to ensure we understand the nature and scale of the change, and potential impacts.
Ngā mihi,
Dave Robson
Gambling Director
Susan Allen - Deputy Director Operations
Susan Allen, our Deputy Director Operations has shared some insight into her role.
"As Deputy Director Operations I am responsible for the front-line delivery of our regulatory activities – with a focus on ensuring our operations are efficient, follow best practice and performance standards, and are effective in terms of our regulatory impact.
For me, this means focusing our efforts in the right place and in the right way to deliver our vision: delivering community wellbeing through reducing gambling-related harms.
My initial focus is on making sure our people have the tools and systems they need to do this well; that we are purposeful in the regulatory activities we undertake, and that we set clear expectations on our regulated entities and individuals so that we can work together to achieve them."
Three-year licensing to end
The Department has evaluated the three-year licencing programme and has made the decision to stop offering three-year licences, effective immediately. The intended benefits of the three-year licencing were to reward and incentivise good compliance and drive a general uplift across the sector in these areas. However, for several reasons, uptake of the programme was limited, and some of the benefits were not realised.
We have begun working to identify alternative approaches for achieving the intended benefits of the three-year approach. We will let you know the outcome of that work once it is completed. We acknowledge that this will be disappointing for those entities that have already committed time and resource to developing these applications. We apologise for the inconvenience caused by our decision.
We will be returning applications already submitted. Any current three-year licences will remain valid until the expiry date.
What is behind the licensing delays?
We know that our processing times for licensing applications and amendments are taking longer than we’d like.
We are making changes to our operations across our teams to focus on getting our workflow up to date, including recruiting new specialist skills in areas where we need them and spreading the workload around all of our offices (Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch).
This means that your current liaison contact may not be the person working through your application, so please direct all your communications to Gambling@dia.govt.nz. That inbox is actively monitored and your message will be sent on to right person promptly. This will help avoid delays in processing your application.
You can help us by:
- ensuring your applications contain all the necessary information so that we can start processing the information straight away. All the information requirements are set out on our website
- providing all documentation in electronic form to reduce paper handling times.
Thank you for your patience while we work through this.
Publishing Venue-level Gaming Machine Profits (GMP)
As the Gambling Regulator, we are committed to delivering community wellbeing through reducing gambling-related harms. This new approach aligns with our focus on harnessing data for effective decision making across the gambling system.
We are updating our quarterly reporting. The amount of money that goes into gaming machines, or gaming machine profits (GMP), will be published at venue level. This means the community will understand the amount of money put into non-casino pokie machines in their area.
There is a demand from our stakeholders for reliable data to inform our understanding of the impact of Class 4 gambling in our communities, and as we are committed to open data and the proactive release of data in alignment with an All of Government approach. We do not have sufficient grounds to not proactively provide this data.
We've heard there are safety and security concerns about making this data available. We will keep the sector well informed of how we intend to implement the change before we proactively release this data publicly. This will ensure Class 4 gambling venues will have the opportunity to consider any operational changes they may need to implement.
Collecting Grants Data update
An essential part of being a good regulator is being able to tell the full story about the sector you regulate. Having a good set of data helps you to do this. As such, we will be enhancing our knowledge of the C4 sector by improving the way in which we collect and publish grants data. It will now be a regular feature of the Department's publication to provide a full picture of grants funding.
The first step will be following up on the 2019 Grants report, by reporting on 2020, and to prepare for a 2021 report. You will be contacted to provide your annual grants distribution data for the 2020 year, and the first half of 2021.
In due course you will be informed about key dates and processes for the ongoing repeatable process, which at this stage will occur every 6 months.
Te Tari Taiwhenua Finance System changes
Between 1 and 9 July 2021 there will be a seven working day blackout period to our finance systems (due to a significant upgrade). During this time, we will have no access to our finance systems, meaning we will not be able to create any invoices, process any direct debits, or process or invoice receipts.
You will not need to do anything, however you will not receive any invoices or have any direct debit payments taken from Te Tari Taiwhenua between 1 to 9 July 2021.
Who is affected?
Parts of the gambling sector that are invoiced through Te Tari Taiwhenua, Department of Internal Affairs.
You can read more here.
Gambits subscription
We regularly review our subscription lists in order to continue providing relevant updates to the gambling sector.
If you wish to continue to receive Gambits, which will cover general industry news, updates from the Gambling Group, and reminders about compliance, please renew your subscription information.
