Hughes Gareth: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1807. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green):Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. This bill has been around for many years—8 years. I do not think it needs to have any more delay with a massive contribution from myself except to say the Green Party supports this bill which mostly contains technical amendments to the original Act dating back from 2004. Denise Roche our gambling spokesperson has spoken on it frequently articulately and cogently. She would point out that although this bill has some measures to address problem gambling we are still not addressing those root causes.It is important that New Zealand the Government and this Parliament acknowledge that New Zealand does have a problem-gambling problem. I know the Department of Internal Affairs has been raised many times in this debate. One figure I would like to draw members’ attention to is an estimate that there was $209 billion lost—$209 billion lost—in gambling over the financial year 2013-14. That is a huge amount of money coming out of New Zealanders’ wallets. What we have seen is that around 40 percent of that comes from class 4 gambling venues or say pubs with a dedicated room with pokie machines. Forty percent of that—so 40 percent of 40 percent—came from pokie machines where we know players for want of a better word have limited control over gambling behaviour when it comes to those machines.We have talked about some of the work that the Department of Internal Affairs is doing but we have not heard about the work the media has done to raise this very important issue. I know that Television One last year actually sent a pensioner into Skycity Casino to stay there and gamble for as long as they could. It took 14 hours before that person left without an intervention. There was no intervention whatsoever over those 14 hours. My colleague Denise Roche actually laid a complaint. It took 6 months as I understand and basically what Skycity Casino received was a slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket giving a pledge that it would work with the Department of Internal Affairs to develop its host responsibility policy.When we know the scale of the harm—not only the $209 billion but the cost in human lives on families and on businesses whose employees take the money to gamble with and to feed their addiction—we need to get more serious than just wet bus tickets. We have heard of the mystery shopping which is fantastic but I still have not heard a member point out that of the 102 venues that were mystery-shopped only one intervention was found—one out of 102. That is not exactly great odds. I welcome the mystery shopping but let us also focus on the other side. Let us make sure that those interventions are happening and those people with gambling problems are getting the support they need.Lastly Skycity is a topic that has been raised in this debate. It is important because the Government through its example and through its policies plays an important role. It is sending New Zealanders a signal that it is OK to see more pokie machines in exchange for law. We have seen a deal criticised by the Auditor-General for its process. At its core when you look at the ethics our laws should not be sold to feed something like problem gambling which brings so much harm to so many New Zealand families. The Greens are strongly on the record with our position on that and I just point out before we rise the irony that we are passing some small albeit welcome changes to reduce problem gambling while at the same time massively increasing pokies in Auckland in a dodgy dirty deal.