Turei Metiria: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is subject to correctionTurei Metiria: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 06 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14464. Text is subject to correction.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): There are still a number of Supplementary Order Papers on Part 2 of the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill that I want to describe for members in the Chamber. I very much appreciated the comments from individual MPs in the Committee that they will be voting for at least some of these Supplementary Order Papers and I invite members who are considering voting for the legislation to also vote for these Supplementary Order Papers at least some of them. Some of them do go to the heart of the deal—for example the removal of the regulatory concessions. But a number of them are designed to improve the legislation to make sure that should the deal proceed and the legislation go ahead that in exchange for Skycity getting 230 more pokie machines there are genuine harm minimisation measures put in place.I will refer to those harm minimisation measures again; they are set out in Supplementary Order Paper 385. The reason I refer to them again is that the advice of the Ministry of Health to the Minister for Economic Development concerning the harm minimisation measures in the deal was that they will not work. There is an argument as to whether or not they are new. They certainly do not appear to the Greens to be new and in some cases the Ministry of Health has said that that is the case; they are not new measures.The Ministry of Health has also said that these measures will not reduce gambling harm. It has said that some of them are worse than useless in effect. Given that there is going to be a huge amount of concession given to the casino to expand its business and to increase its gambling opportunities and therefore problem-gambling harm we should take advice from those who are directly involved in managing that harm. The Ministry of Health is the Government agency that is responsible. It is saying that the harm minimisation measures are not going to work that they will not make any significant difference to the harm that will be caused by the extra gambling opportunities. I believe that if the Minister is refusing to take the advice of the Ministry of Health and if the Minister is refusing to give the proper balance between the concessions that are given to Skycity and the public interest in reducing problem-gambling harm then it is the responsibility of Parliament to do so for the ministry.Given that we have the opportunity tonight to vote according to our conscience as opposed to along party lines we have the opportunity—each individual MP in this Committee—to say that we want to have stronger controls because we believe that problem gambling is a serious issue; that it is right for a Government for a Parliament to regulate to help protect against increases in problem gambling; and that we would like to see more stringent measures and here are some that can be chosen by individual MPs to be put in place. So it is not about opposing the deal itself; it is about making sure that the public interest versus the concessions that Skycity gets are properly balanced.We are very careful to make sure that there are different kinds of opportunities in these Supplementary Order Papers for members to individually consider whether each individual change is one that they are prepared to support because in their own conscience they believe that it is the right thing to do. There are a number of members particularly National members—John Banks even—who have in the past expressed extreme concern about the impacts of gambling who represent communities that areparticularly affected by gambling. We talked yesterday about Asian Family Services which is particularly concerned about the impact on its community and Pacific Island communities who are particularly concerned because they too bear the brunt. It gives the opportunity for those MPs who represent those communities to put in place stronger harm minimisation measures for those communities and yet still vote for the bill if that is what they want to do. There are those opportunities because of the conscience vote. We have provided MPs with those opportunities and hope that they take them up.I was very disappointed with the Minister’s contribution earlier. It was really just about shouting at everybody. It did not address the fact that there are some evidential holes in the justification for this legislation such as where the numbers of 1000 construction jobs and 800 convention jobs come from given that the information that is used to justify those numbers in the regulatory impact statement does not say that. Of course we then hear again another misrepresentation of the facts from the Minister who has been accusing the Greens of voting for the—