[By DAVID COSGRIFF, Southland Times]

Invercargill bar Waxy O'Shea's removed half its gaming machines last week, Invercargill Licensing Trust marketing manager Gary Muir said yesterday.

The trust wasted no time removing nine of the 18 pokie machines from the bar when the new Gambling Act was passed by Parliament earlier this month, he said.

The law sets a maximum limit of nine machines at new sites, and the cap applies retrospectively to operators licensed after October 2001.

Mr Muir said it was no five-minute job taking out the machines because they had to be balanced and made inoperable.

However, the pokies, which were owned by the trust's charitable and sports foundation arms, might be used to replace ageing machines at other venues.

The nine pokies were the only ones that had to be removed from the Invercargill City Council area, which had 363 machines.

Nine of Queenstown's 95 pokies were also taken but none had to be removed in the Clutha, Gore, Central Otago or Southland district council areas.

Mr Muir said the trust was not happy about the reduction in machine numbers at Waxy's but the extra space in the gambling area could make it more convivial.

The space the machines took up might be replaced by a few coffee tables and some chairs, he said.  Nationwide, 1416 of the country's 22,971 pokie machines had to be taken out of play by midnight last night.

Green MP Sue Bradford said the numbers removed were so low it was a farce.

"There is a huge gambling problem in New Zealand caused by the 23,000 pokie machines sucking the life out of communities.

"The removal of 6 percent of these machines is no more than a drop in the ocean," Ms Bradford said.

The Government should have restricted all venues to nine machines.  That would have taken 8733 machines (38 percent) out of service.

"At least this would have made some impact for the thousands of people and their families caught in the grip of gambling addiction," she said.