Following a successful pilot operation involving 32 venues around New Zealand, the Department of Internal Affairs will begin work on Monday to connect over 20,000 gaming machines in pubs and clubs to an electronic monitoring system (EMS). All venues must be connected before the 18 March 2007 deadline. By monitoring gaming machine operation the Department of Internal Affairs aims to ensure the integrity of the games and limit opportunities for crime and dishonesty.

Monitoring systems are already in place in New Zealand’s six casinos and EMS is standard practice in many jurisdictions because of the large cash turnover involved. According to Mike Hill, the Department’s Director of Gambling Compliance, “EMS will help safeguard money intended for community groups.” Common problems previously found by Gambling Inspectors during audits have been inaccurate record keeping and incorrect banking in the manual records kept by the pubs and clubs.

The Gambling Act 2003 introduced stricter licensing rules and since then the number of gaming machines in New Zealand has declined 18%. Auckland has lost two machine venues and Christchurch eight, and there are now nearly 5000 fewer gaming machines than in June 2003. The EMS will monitor how much money is gambled on each machine and its payout to players, as well as how much money should be banked. The system will ensure that all software conforms to approved versions and detect software failures or tampering.

Gaming machines at every venue will be connected to a site controller by a fibre optic loop. The site controller will gather data from each gaming machine and each day a snapshot of the accumulated data will be transmitted to the EMS host system in Wellington, enabling detailed reports to be produced. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Rick Barker, was briefed on the system at the Wellington headquarters of INTRALOT New Zealand Limited, the company contracted to provide the EMS host system. Information relevant to the operational needs of societies and venues will be available on the EMS website at www.ems.govt.nz (E-07.13.06)

© Copyright 2006 CasinoCompendium



>>> return to archives
>>> return to frontpage