Roy Heather: Gambling Bill — Third Reading 
Roy Heather: Gambling Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8644] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT NZ) 
: 
 It has been a long and tortuous route for this bill. It started off a long while ago with the first reading in about April 2002 and there has been toing and froing between the parties with deals done here and parties pulling out there since then. I congratulate the Green Party on the principled stand it has taken on this bill. It realised that there were significant difficulties with regard to the bill and its members at least had the fortitude to stand up and say that the bill was not right. I do not agree with all the reasons that they have done that but at least they have had the fortitude to do so—unlike United Future which stepped into the breach. 
As a result of that we are to have many things that I think are retrograde steps for this country. We are to have Internet gambling interactive gambling— 
Hon George Hawkins 
: We already have it. 
HEATHER ROY 
: We are to have a lot more of it—online casinos. I notice in the bill that there will be no more physical casinos despite the experience in Rotorua that my honourable colleague Georgina te Heuheu told us about on Tuesday whereby the casino planned for that city missed out on coming into being by one day. 
I thought that the United Future member Marc Alexander gave a very anguished and defensive speech. He obviously feels that there are some difficulties with regard to the provisions of the bill in areas that he does not want to support yet the United Future party is going to continue to support it. I urge the United Future members when they vote to consider doing what the Greens have done in their principled stand. It is not too late for the United Future members to say that they do not agree with many of the provisions in the bill. 
ACT New Zealand opposes the bill for many reasons. It is interesting to note that the bill started its life as the “Responsible Gambling Bill’. The dropping of the word “responsible” from the title is I think an admission that there is little responsibility involved with regard to this bill. I could point to many clauses where that point is relevant and I will perhaps mention them as I go through my speech. 
The Supplementary Order Paper is a disgrace. I refer to Supplementary Order Paper 132 put forward in the name of the Hon George Hawkins the Minister of Internal Affairs. That Supplementary Order Paper is huge containing 65 pages of amendments to this bill. We heard from Sue Bradford that the Government Administration Committee spent a long time on the bill and had many many hours of discussion about amending bits here and there in the bill to make it better. Then at the last minute a Supplementary Order Paper came forward from the Minister with a huge number of amendments. Those amendments had had no scrutiny by members on the Opposition side of the House who had many valid concerns about them. The Supplementary Order Paper overturned many painstaking decisions that had been made at the select committee level. Worst of all it had no scrutiny from the public. There was no ability for the public to put forward submissions and to have their say which is what our process is all about. 
I recently spoke at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in the Cook Islands. I was asked to give a presentation on the New Zealand select committee process. The other delegates there were very impressed with our select committee process—the number of select committees we have the way we organise the readings of a bill and the amount of public submission that we have. Supplementary Order Paper 132 makes a farce of the system of democracy that we have in this country where the public are able to make submissions. That is one of the things that the delegates from around the Commonwealth were very impressed with—the amount of scrutiny we had—but there was no scrutiny of that Supplementary Order Paper. Many of the amendments that we see in this legislation now are there without any scrutiny at all. They just show that the Government decided to say that it knows what is best for this country and to tell people how to run their lives—particularly in this case in relation to gambling. 
I come back to the online casinos. I think it is a very important point that interactive Internet gambling will proliferate. It will make the problems with gambling much worse. Once upon a time people had to get dressed and go down the road to find pokie machines or go to the local casino. Now the temptation to gamble is there all the time in their homes if they want it to be. I suspect that the 3 percent 6 percent or 9 percent—the escalating number that we heard about from Judith Collins—of problem gamblers that we see in this country is set to escalate even further because of Internet gambling. Who do we have to thank for that? We can thank the Labour Government supported by the United Future party. 
I would like to come to the new structure proposed in the bill with the Gambling Commission. The commission’s structure sits at the head of the other structures. It is responsible for appeals and limited licensing. The Gambling Commission it should be noted will have no teeth and will not be independent. If we need anything it is to have a transparent process and an independent body heading up the gambling process. Underneath the Gambling Commission will sit the Department of Internal Affairs. Whereas once upon a time there was a vertical structure so that an organisation reported to those above it now the Department of Internal Affairs will have a horizontal structure. We will have policy for all gaming evolved there and enforcement will also be the role of the Department of Internal Affairs. The licensing and regulation of gaming machines servicing of the Gaming Commission and servicing of the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board will all be parked there. There is not a lot of transparency here. In particular the licensing and regulation of gaming machines and the servicing of the Gambling Commission should be part of the Gambling Commission in order for transparency to exist. 
The New Zealand Future member Brent Catchpole— 
Peter Brown 
: New Zealand First. 
HEATHER ROY 
: Sorry—New Zealand First. I do beg the member’s pardon; that was a Freudian slip. The New Zealand First member mentioned the huge amount of ministerial control that exists under this legislation. It is indicative of what is happening in a lot of the legislation that we see now. The bill that we debated prior to this one the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill also saw an awful lot of ministerial control. What we do not want to see is the power of the Minister to increase the number of gaming machines at some venues. Why is it the sole responsibility of the Minister to decide which venue should be allowed to have more than the allotted nine gaming machines? There is no reason for that at all. That system is open to abuse and it allows the Government to pick its favourites—something that we are seeing more and more as this Government’s term progresses. That too is another reason that the word “responsible” has been dropped from the title of this bill. What responsibility exists when one person has the power to do those things? It is just not right at all. 
For many reasons ACT New Zealand opposes this bill. Most of all we are worried about the ministerial control and also about the new structure that does exist. But the potential for the huge proliferation of online casinos Internet gambling and interactive gambling which the United Future Party needs to take a great deal of responsibility for has been a huge disappointment with this bill.