Bakshi Kanwaljit Singh: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBakshi Kanwaljit Singh: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13271. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the third reading of the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) AmendmentBill. First of all I would like to acknowledge the member Te Ururoa Flavell for the hard work he has done to bring this bill to the House. I would like to touch first of all on the Indian history aspects of the harm of gambling. Many members might have heard of theWar ofKurukshetra which is mentioned in theEpic of Mahabharata. About 100000 people lost their lives at that time about 5000 years ago and the cause of that war the starting point was gambling. We see that historically gambling has been causing harm to our society. National is committed seriously to addressing the issue of problem gambling. This bill enables that commitment to harm minimisation in society.In addition the Government has committed about $55 million to problem gambling strategies that focus on giving people the assistance they need. Gambling machine venues tend to be over-represented in lower-income communities and town centre areas with a high population of Māori and Pacific Islanders. They are effectively being targeted and often severely harmed by that. The communities in South Auckland especially have been very vocal in their representation against the number of pokie machines in that area. The class 4 gambling pokie machine venue policy is being developed by Auckland Council to replace the policies of seven former territorial local authorities. The Government is concerned by the harm caused by gambling and therefore imposes various levies on the proceeds of gambling in order to deal with this.The bill seeks to overcome these vulnerable locations and it reviews or transfers the majority of pokie machines or even eliminates pokies from those suburbs and towns where they are particularly concentrated or doing particular harm. In fact many communities at risk have voiced their feelings concerning the pokies in their area and have been successful in having them removed. The bill especially requires all pokie machine trusts corporate societies and other distributors of the proceeds of gambling machines to return at least 80 percent of these funds generated by the gamblers’ losses on local pokie machines back into the charitable organisations which are meeting a variety of needs in the same local area. The original bill would have required 80 percent of the gambling proceeds to be distributed in the local area where they were raised. The Commerce Committee recommended the introduction of regulation-making powers instead. We can achieve the same outcome through regulation which is more flexible and will enable us to consider issues such as national or regional groups that receive funding from the gambling societies.Gamblers who experience problems with their behaviour when using pokie machines will benefit from the $55 million 3-year strategy for problem gambling. The provisions will include front-line assistance and support in terms of safe gambling practice and raising awareness of the dangers of gambling; $25.3 million for a front-line intervention service to assist people with their gambling problems; $20.5 million allocated for public health services particularly prevention activities to encourage safe gambling practice and awareness of the dangers represented by gambling; and $6.6 million is allocated for research and evaluation.The original bill would have allowed councils to shut down venues and ban gambling. This method would have been too extreme. Many councils have a sinking-lid policy that requires that no new licences can be granted for pokie venues and machines and that the licences cannot be transferred if the venue closes. This also means that over time the number of venues and pokie machines will be reduced. However the select committee supports the transfer of venues from low socio-economic neighbourhoods into other areas like central business districts.The original bill also recommended that councils rather than gaming societies should distribute funding. We support the continued role of gaming societies. The select committee is addressing these issues through a wider package of reforms that will be introduced later this year as the Minister of Internal Affairs the Hon Chris Tremainmentioned in his speech. Many community groups like charitable organisations and sports clubs rely on funding from gaming societies to provide important services to their communities. These reforms will also look at the amount gaming societies are required to return to the communities. Every additional 1 percent means $8.5 million more for the communities and sports groups. We are also looking at simplifying the way societies pay bars and pubs to host gaming machines. One way is perhaps to extend licensing and renew their licences as an incentive for the venues to meet these criteria.Regarding racing the original bill recommended that racing be removed as an authorised purpose for gaming funding. We do not support this due to the impact it would have on the racing industry. The select committee’s changes make parts of the bill easier to implement while removing some parts that were not supported by the submitters. The select committee’s improvements enable a smoother way to introduce harm minimisation devices and a more flexible model for ensuring that the gaming proceeds go back to the communities where they are raised.We know that the Green Party has been against everything that we have been proposing like economic growth more jobs and other things but today the Green member Denise Roche has proven that it is also anti-rugby. With this I recommend that we support this bill in the third reading.