People from "all over the world" have voiced their support of a Far North pub owner who ditched gaming machines for the sake of his community.

Glen Dick, who took over the Rawene Masonic Hotel last December, made the call after finding a young baby crying outside his pub while its mother gambled inside. He announced his decision via Facebook last week.

"The post was just to notify the community that we're getting rid of pokies – but it ended up reaching more than 65,000 people online and the support's just been a bit overwhelming really," Dick said.

Tiny Rawene was not the first in the region to cull the machines; Horeke, another low socio-economic town on the edge of the Hokianga Habour, has been pokie-free for ten years.

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The Rawene Masonic Hotel is the latest Far North pub to ditch its pokie machines.

Horeke Tavern's owner Peter Maddren got rid of his six machines around 2008.

"People were becoming addicted and the pokies were just sucking the money out of this community – that was the guts of it," he said. 

"It's nuts and it's stripping money from the people who can least afford to lose it. In the end, it's the kids that suffer."

Maddren acknowledged that some venues "may need pokie revenue to survive", however. He said that in times of smoking bans and cheap supermarket alcohol, rural pubs were no longer the social hubs of the community and getting customers could be difficult.

"Pokies are an income earner for the pub that helps pay the rent," he said.

Nevertheless, Maddren had no regrets about getting rid of his six machines: "We did a good thing, I'm convinced of it, and if I was in charge of the country I never would have let them in."

Andree Froude of the Problem Gambling Foundation said while pulling the plug on pokies wasn't something that happened a lot, pub owners were becoming more aware of the damage gaming did to communities.

"Big ups to them," she said of the Rawene Masonic Hotel. "In this situation, something positive has come out of something sad."

She said she knew of venues in low socio-economic south Auckland that had turned their pokie parlours into craft beer tasting zones, or started up quiz nights and theme parties as an alternative attraction to gambling.

Last year, in New Plymouth, several venues also got rid of their pokie machines. The owner of Hour Glass and Our Place, Mark Louis, said he considered pokies "the P of the gambling world" due to their addictiveness.

Hospitality New Zealand's gaming representative Tony Crosby, who operates ten gaming venues himself, said "extreme incidents" such as gamblers leaving children outside pubs were less common than they were five years ago. 

He said Glen Dick's experience with the mother and baby at Rawene was a "one-off" and no reason for other venues to stop offering pokie machines.

"If venue operators follow the Gambling Act's harm minimisation stipulations, such as strict monitoring, having these machines should not be a problem."

Pokie machines are owned by gaming trusts, which reinvest 40 per cent of pokie earnings – more than $200 million last year, according to Department of Internal Affairs data – into community groups.

But at the Rawene Masonic Hotel, Dick said he was convinced the machines did communities more harm than good and that he was pleased to see them gone.

He wasn't worried about the decrease in revenue due to his decision; Dick said he was "lucky to get even a soft drink" purchase out of most pokie users, and wanted to focus on the food, family, and accommodation sides of the business.

Dick said he "would love to see" a domino effect of Far North pubs eliminating their pokie machines, to stop Rawene gamblers simply moving on to the next closest venue.

"And for now, we'd like to say thanks to everyone that's been getting in touch, complete strangers from all over the world, to support our decision here."

 - Stuff