Hipkins Chris: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1507. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):It is a pleasure to take a call on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). Can I first of all congratulate the Minister in charge of the bill who is listed on the top of the bill as the Hon Rick Barker. Of course Rick Barker has not been a member of the House for about 3½ years now and it is about 8½ years since he introduced the legislation in the first place. Such is the present Government’s commitment to addressing problem gambling that the bill has sat for that long on the Order Paper without any action to try to address it. Can I congratulate the Minister currently in the chair the Hon Peter Dunne. I believe he is about the fifth or the sixth Minister to be given responsibility for progressing this legislation and can I also note that he has had significantly more success in doing so than many of the Ministers who have sat in the chair prior to him. I want to say that I think that that is important because I support the intention of the Gambling Act as it was passed at the time which is to reduce problem gambling in New Zealand to crack down on the abuse of class 4 gambling and of course to put in place a mechanism in the form of the Gambling Commission which creates an arm’s length relationship from the Government and puts some independence into the decision making that takes place with regard to gambling.I want to refer in particular to the provisions in Part 2 which members will find on page 10 and to clause 8 in particular which talks about an increase in casino gambling. It gives the Gambling Commission the absolute authority to determine what constitutes an increase in the opportunities for casino gambling. Why does the bill do that? The bill does that because we believe as a Parliament that it is important that those decisions are made independently of the Government—that decisions around the increase in casino gambling are made independently of the Government.This Government has no regard for that. It is absolutely ridiculous that this Committee is making changes to those provisions at a time when the Government is unilaterally increasing opportunities for casino gambling and therefore increasing opportunities for gambling harm in order to get a dodgy deal with the Skycity Casino. This bill specifically gives that responsibility around decisions for increasing casino gambling to the Gambling Commission. It removes it from the Government. It says that the Government should not be involved in those things and yet we know that this Government has been actively involved in those things because that was the trade-off that it made to get a free—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! Sorry but the member will sit down. The member may or may not have been in the Chamber at the time when we had an earlier discussion when I sat the previous member down for broadening out the level of this debate. The debate is very narrow. The clauses are very narrow. Other speakers have kept it narrow and members are expected to maintain that level. Thank you.CHRIS HIPKINS: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I refer you specifically to Part 2 clause 8 new section 12(1) which says: “Decisions on what constitutes an increase in the opportunities for casino gambling are a function of the Gambling Commission.” That is exactly the clause that I am talking about and it is directly relevant—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Thank you. The reference to such things as “dodgy” dealings between the Government and Skycity that the member made is not appropriate for a debate that is kept this narrow. Please maintain the narrowness of the debate and the clauses under debate.CHRIS HIPKINS: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. In my comments I was referring to the need for independence which is exactly what this clause deals with. It specifically gives the Gambling Commission the authority for those things and it is perfectly in order to discuss—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The member will regain his seat. I will not be taking any more advice from the member on this matter. I am in the Chair at the moment. The member will respect the ruling that I have given. Thank you.CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you Mr Chair. It is important that the Gambling Commission has a discretion and an arm’s length independence from the Government when it makes decisions about increasing the opportunities for casino gambling because if that were not the case then the rest of the clauses in this bill that are about reducing problem gambling in casinos would simply be redundant because it would mean that the Government would be able to override that at will without any reference back to the Gambling Commission. That would simply be an abuse of the position and would mean that the provisions that are being passed in this bill are meaningless. It would mean that the Government is paying lip service to reducing problem gambling but it does not actually walk the talk. It does not walk the talk and that perhaps is one of the reasons that this bill has been sitting on the Order Paper for nearly a decade. The Government is not actually interested in reducing problem gambling if that gets in the way of other deals that it wants to do.I want to talk as well about class 4 gambling because I acknowledge that class 4 gambling is where some of the worst problem-gambling takes place. It is also where—if we go back to the history of why the Gambling Act was passed in the first place—some of the biggest rorts in terms of the proceeds of gambling took place.I was the president of a students association before the passage of the Gambling Act. In that time I was involved in trying to get money out of the pokie trusts for sponsoring different events including the University Games. One of the deals that the pokie trusts used to do was to say to a student sports team say because it was all run out the back of the pub and there was very little accountability: “We will give you money for your new uniforms”—or whatever—“but they will have to have our name on them and we want half of the money that you are being given coming back across our bar. And if you don’t do that we’re not going to give you the money.” The reason that the primary legislation for the bill that we are debating was passed in the first place was to try to cut down on some of those things because that was simply wrong. That was a rorting of the system and it was wrong and the first legislation was an attempt to eliminate that. What of course has become abundantly clear since that time is that it was very successful but it was not completely successful and there are still rorts in the system that this bill seeks to address.I think that these amendments are very welcome because we do not want to have those kinds of arrangements. That is not what the whole intention around this was. You know if we go back right to the beginning when pokie machines were introduced in New Zealand in the first place some would look back on that and say that doing that was a big mistake and that in fact if we could turn the clock back we would not have introduced the pokie machines because of the problems that have gone with them. But they were introduced to be charitable—basically to generate revenue for charitable activities. That was the purpose of introducing the pokie machines in the first place.The type of arrangement that I have just mentioned was not really charitable. In fact it was a rort and it was designed to increase the profits of the business hosting the pokie machines rather than to put the proceeds of the pokie machines to the charitable purpose that it was intended for. So I think that cracking down on that and the further refinements that this bill makes to crack down on that are welcome.I want to refer to the select committee report which is published at the beginning of the bill. I want to say that I regret that the select committee at the time—and we are going back three or four Parliaments ago now to when the bill was considered by the Government Administration Committee—was unable to reach an agreement when it came to pokie machines in outdoor areas. That was a direct intention to flout the smoke-free provisions of legislation that was passed by Parliament. It meant that venues could put pokie machines outside. People could sit there and smoke on them when they were outside and it was one of those things—you know smoking and gambling are two very addictive things and it meant that people could meet both of their addictions at the same time.It is very regrettable that the committee was unable to get a majority to make a recommendation to deal with that practice because I think that that is wrong. I hope that time has moved on. There is more broad support across Parliament for smoke-free measures now than there was 8 years ago when the matter was discussed by the select committee and I hope that we can actually get some agreement on that either in this bill or in a future bill. I think that dealing with problem gambling means breaking the cycle to some extent and actually forcing someone to go outside to take a cigarette—if they are that addicted to cigarettes that they have to have a break to go out and have a ciggie—at least breaks up their sitting in front of the pokie machine for that continuous period of time. That is a good thing. I hope that the House will at some point—in voting on amendments and so on either to this bill or to another bill—deal with that issue because I think that is very important.Overall the Labour Party is in support of many of the provisions in this legislation because we want to deal with problem gambling and gambling harm. We introduced the legislation when Rick Barker was the Minister of Internal Affairs and there are very important provisions in this bill. I personally believe that they do not go far enough and there is a lot more work to be done in this area. I acknowledge that there are other bills coming before the House that are also going to be dealing with the issue of problem gambling and I look forward to taking part in the debate on those.