Hudson Brett: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHudson Brett: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1805. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BRETT HUDSON (National):It is very much a pleasure to stand here and speak to the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). I would have to say having listened to a number of other speakers give their pieces in this debate that it does appear you can say with some degree of confidence that there is a very good chance this bill will receive a successful third reading at the conclusion of the debate. That is very very good to know because it is in fact a very important bill. It is one of three—one of multiple amendments. The first fortunately was passed some time ago and the third amendment currently sits in front of the Government Administration Committee and that will give it full attention in due course.The Government’s focus particularly in the area of class 4 gambling is to minimise harm within our communities while maximising returns to those communities. Before I get into the substance of that I will hark back. This bill of course as has been acknowledged was introduced in 2007 under the previous Labour Government by I believe the Hon Rick Barker. I think he was mentioned as the member who introduced it. Of course it was not passed by that Government prior to its some might say richly deserved ousting by the public in late 2008. So Government members had well over a year to deal with it. The public might draw its own deductions from that on just what the priority of that bill was to that Government back then. I have heard members complain about how long this Government might be taking to deal with it. Certainly the previous Labour Government had all the time it needed and treated the matter with the importance it obviously placed on it.I turn to the bill and what I hope will be a successful third reading. As I have said we wish to maximise returns to the community while minimising harm. If we look at this class of gambling in the year 2013 it contributed around $637 million to the community. So it is a source of much-needed very welcome funds within our communities. Of course we need to strike a balance to make sure that we minimise harm and find ways to help those who have issues with gambling. We currently require around 37 percent of funds as a minimum to be returned to the communities but that will be lifting over time to 40 percent or more. Really importantly actually this bill requires that 80 percent—80 percent—of those proceeds go back to the areas where the funds came from. So if we have areas for instance where problem gambling appears to be a greater issue then we have certainty that in fact more of the funds going to communities will go to those specific areas which is a very positive thing indeed.I would like to talk a bit on harm minimisation. It starts in fact with ongoing obligations and duties for the gaming societies after having received their licences and they are around obligations to minimise costs maximise community returns and minimise the risks of problem gambling. Alongside that the Government raises a problem gambling levy which raises approximately $55 million over 3 years to fund services and minimise gambling harm in communities. A point I would like to note because I have heard Skycity mentioned a lot is that local councils already have the power to impose sinking-lid policies on pokie machines. In fact the total number of machines has dropped from approximately 25000 in 2003 to around 17000 now. Despite what the Opposition members are trying to say it has been well established that the total number of pokie machines will reduce even after we get our $400 million conference centre for no cash outlay from the taxpayer. It tries to pretend that that is not the case but it is a well-established fact that it is.On top of that through the Department of Internal Affairs we continue to investigate further harm minimisation actions particularly the use of technology within machines to help prevent problem gamblers getting into greater difficulties such as facial recognition technology. The department has investigated areas such as this. At the present it has concluded it still has further work to do and it still wishes to do further monitoring of evidence particularly in other countries just to ascertain that that will be an effective use of technology should it be mandated particularly as part of a standard that societies and venues may have to adopt.Along with that I think another good practical measure that this bill allows is that it allows operators the ability to prohibit mobile eftpos machines from being taken near gambling machines in their venues. That is a very sound pragmatic and practical idea. It would mean that players would be forced to take a break. They would have to walk away from machines if they were in fact going to seek additional funds to continue gambling. I think everyone can agree that that break would help most many certainly some to actually question whether or not they want to and whether or not it would be the right thing for them to continue gambling at that time. It is a very good idea indeed.Other parts of this bill that I think are very important and that really add some protection and some value are around transparency and accounting. I think there has been a public perception that there is rorting for want of a better term that does go or has gone on around this form of gambling and I think venue fees is one rort that has been canvassed as something that the public or many in the public at least feel is something that is manufactured and a bit distorted. This bill basically specifies that venue fees will be limited to actual reasonable and necessary costs. It puts some very clear limitations around what societies and the venues can try to do to prevent distortion of returns through manufactured costs.The bill also requires that profits be paid directly into the society’s account and not used for instance—as has been suggested may have been the case in the past—to manage cash-flow pressures either on the society or potentially also on the venue. It also sets out circumstances in which a society may apply gaming machine profits to its own authorised purposes—i.e. instead of making grants to the wider community. It also mandates a requirement that community grant recipients must use the grants for the specific authorised purposes the grants were issued for. I think that will all help to give the public far greater confidence that the system is not being rorted that the profit distributions are being fairly applied and that in actual fact those receiving the moneys are actually using them for authorised purposes and the purposes they were stipulated for in the first place.Another area that I think is particularly important—and in fact it strikes me as a bit surprising that it was not originally in there—is the area of information gathering. It appears that there have been some gaps. We have expected that the Department of Internal Affairs would record information around gambling and it would monitor it but it appears that we have not actually given it the proper authority to collect the sort of information that would help it to do its job most effectively. This does seek to repair or ameliorate that. So it will now have a better defined authority around the information it can collect what it can collect how often it can collect it and the manner and the form in which it can be collected and in fact used.It also now—now but not previously—permits including details of how the gambling profits are distributed. That struck me upon going through this as a very odd situation—that it is an amendment that must be made now and was not there already. But another very good thing in terms of transparency is that the bill requires any resulting statistical information that comes from that monitoring and compliance activity to be published in electronic format at a minimum on the Department of Internal Affairs website. Any interested party any member of the public or any particular group can satisfy themselves through the data that the monitoring functions are being delivered well but also that the information is available for all—all—to access.But there is another thing that struck me if I may say as just absolutely bizarre—absolutely bizarre. I will not sing from the old song.Tim Macindoe: Oh!BRETT HUDSON: How bizarre how bizarre how bizarre! The change in this amendment now actually permits the Department of Internal Affairs to test new technologies new ideas and new models in gaming and gambling venues. It was never able to previously take a new piece of technology and determine how it would work in real life. That is a substantial and really positive change. I commend this bill to the House and look forward to it receiving a successful third reading. Thank you.