McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I intend to take a brief call on this motion. I guess I'm not a particularly religious person but Luke 23:24 says Father forgive them for they know not what they say."—and that's what worries me most about the truncated select committee process.I think if you listen to the Minister's introduction to this section of the debate he talked about the number of people that have been round the country consulting. The issue that worries us the most I think is the one that was raised by the Hon Nikki Kaye earlier on—and that is the fact that the sporting sector doesn't appear to have been widely consulted on this. I know that they did submit at length on the earlier stages and on the call for submissions on the Messara report but none the less we've heard nothing from the Government on the fate of the sporting sector. I think that is a major concern for us and will be as we go into the select committee process. That's one of the reasons that we think the select committee process needs to be run over the normal course of time—and it's unfortunate that it's not.The industry is an interesting industry—and as I said earlier I've been involved in this for a long long time—and it is a very complicated industry. The great value to New Zealand is not in the gambling and the gaming part of it; the great value to New Zealand is in the breeding. It would be very useful for us to have the opportunity during that select committee stage to hear extensively from the breeders of New Zealand which I very much doubt will happen with any length given the shortness of the time that that select committee is going to be run for. I am also a great fan of the late John Clarke and he was most famous for "Rugby Racing and Beer" "down under they're mad over" and of course that is what grips most New Zealanders—SPEAKER: Yeah "Kick it in the guts Trev."IAN McKELVIE: —and most New Zealanders therefore have a very serious interest in the process that this bill undertakes. Whilst they have had the opportunities to submit earlier to it I think that the truncating of the select committee process and the fact that it's going to run for two weeks will preclude a whole lot of people who have a great interest in making this industry the great industry it once was—they won't have the opportunity to submit on it. We may well miss out as a result of the shortened select committee process on a whole lot of information that could otherwise have come to us. If the Government had moved on this earlier there would be no need for a truncated select committee because one of the primary factors that drive this is the fact that the racing year runs from 1 July and it's necessary to have this in place by the time the racing industry starts its year. I think that that's unfortunate and probably the Government should have done a lot more work a lot earlier on this given that they'd had the Messara report for at least six months. So those are the factors that I think are very concerning for us.The offshore betting charges are another very complicated matter. When you think that this is being sent to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee a large part of this bill is a tax bill—and tax bills as anyone in this House will know are very complex matters and they do need a lot of consideration. I've not seen a tax bill go through this House yet that hasn't had significant alteration in the course of the select committee process because you get all sorts of people who understand tax very well submitting on it. That's another thing that we're going to miss in the course of this and I just hope that the bill as a result of that doesn't get sent back to the House at a later date for amendment—as many of them do. So we are opposed to the shortened select committee process. I think it's a shame for the industry.I think that some good will come of this in the end. But we're very concerned about particularly the sports betting part of this bill and where it ends up. The other piece we're very concerned about is the RITA—or the Racing Industry Transitional Authority—and the fact that there's no definite end date to that authority's appointment. I think appointing the RITA is a sensible option; the problem is that it doesn't have a finite date. That's an issue that we're very concerned about and we'd like to see some discussion on that in the course of the select committee process as well.So that's my short contribution to this. I do think it's a concern to us all that it's been truncated in the manner it has."