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This edition of Gambits:now includes:

• an update on the consultation process for New Zealand Appendices to the Australia/New Zealand Gaming Machine National Standard
• details about an e-booklet that will highlight the experiences of organisations which have applied for grants from gaming machine proceeds
• a reminder about the scheduled outage of the EMS and IGP core service on Wednesday 18 May.

We will soon begin a two-staged consultation process for the New Zealand Appendices (Casino and Class 4) to the Australian/New Zealand Gaming Machine National Standard 2015 (NS2015).

On 24 March we updated you on the NS2015 and withdrew the consultation on the New Zealand appendices following feedback from stakeholders.

We have looked at our approach to engage with relevant stakeholders and will shortly open consultation on revised appendices. These will reference solely the technical and legal appendix requirements necessary to implement NS2015 in New Zealand.

Later we will open discussion with the wider sector about substantive harm-minimisation requirements that could be developed for a future National Standard Appendices.

We continued with consultation on the NS2015 itself and that consultation closed on 11 April. Thank you to everybody who provided feedback.

The Department of Internal Affairs is producing an e-booklet for our website on the benefits to the community of grants from gaming machine proceeds. The book will describe the experiences of 10 organisations which have applied for pokie grants and will cover why they applied for funding, any challenges they faced, the purpose the money was put to and possible tips for other applicants. We will also include a “how to apply for grants” page.

The writer is author and former TV journalist Anna Kenna. She has identified a range of big and small recipients that include national and local, sporting, health and arts. The societies connected with the organisations identified have already been contacted.

We’re hoping that these stories will promote the benefit of gaming machine funding to communities and provide useful information to organisations applying for pokie funds.

We would like to remind you of the scheduled outage of the Electronic Monitoring System (EMS) and Integrated Gaming Platform (IGP) core system on Wednesday 18 May.

The outage will start at 10am on 18 May and we expect that all systems will be fully restored by 10am the following day.

If you have any questions regarding this outage please email us at ems@dia.govt.nz or contact your liaison officer.