This is such a great story on so many levels. We hate pokies - the are a drug for too many people on Struggle street.
So, in the far North in a little town of Horeke the local publican has biffed the pokie machines because they were sick of the way people were feeding them their weekly pay packets.
With the pokies here, people just thought this place was a bank. They'd get money out on their cards and put it straight into the machines."
By all accounts , its made the pub and undoubtedly the town a bit better place.
Regular Phil Campbell, however, said the punters who used to play the pokies most were the very ones who couldn't afford it.
"We had kids here going without breakfast and lunch."
This is no small step for a publican to take - Pokies are often a source of a large percentage of a pubs income. And this publican thought that maybe it was okay because the funds were going back to the community but that was not the case.
Problem Gambling Foundation chief executive Graeme Ramsey says only a small proportion of pokies spending returns to the community as grants.
Worse, the bulk of spending is in poor areas, such as Kaikohe, while much of the grant money goes to already well-off areas such as the Bay of Islands.
"They really are transferring money from poor to rich, from brown to white, from women to men," he says.
And it appears that the Far North , an area that regularly holds the title for being the worst in a raft of social statistics, is also the Home of Pokies
The Far North has one pokie machine for every 104 people aged 18 and over, well above the national average of one for every 156 people.
So good on Tunisia and Dawson Joyce. They have made a hard call but its one that simply makes them community heros.
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