Mitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7318. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Sorry Mr Williamson I think you might have jumped the queue here a little. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3). We are in a position where we want to make it very clear to the people listening and help them understand what our position is. We do not condone any form of liberalisation of gambling. We need to make sure that we have done everything that we can possibly do to tighten up and regulate this sector this industry particularly. We cannot actually support this bill as it sits on the Table at the moment although there are some very amiable qualities within this bill that New Zealand First supports. Listening to some of the speakers and what they have got to say there have been some very good contributions today and certainly some well-planned discussions on it. We have gone through many of these before.This bill particularly though has come a long way from the first chance that I had to speak on it in the second reading to where it is now. So coming out of the select committee in the second reading and then going through the Committee of the whole House to as it sits on the Table it is a completely different bill from what we first looked at. Although we still are not supporting this bill I would like to talk about the main reason why we cannot support it and also to talk about some of the positive things that this bill has in it.Before I get to that I think we need to address some of the things that have been brought up in the House about harm minimisation. It is very important to note the trajectory the way in which we are travelling and tracking downwards in this country in respect of the number of gamblers who are suffering from gambling issues and that harm that we are starting to move into a much more reduced space on. The statistics of the actual gambling community—if that is the right term—show that 0.03 percent of gamblers have a problem with gambling. There is nothing that breaks down what that constitutes—how much of it is actually involved with class 4 gambling how much of it is involved with the casino how much is involved with TAB. The elephant in the roomnow of course is online gambling and then of course you have got Lotto and very many other forms of gambling. So to throw stones at an industry that I think is strongly tracking in the right direction is the wrong thing to do.Nothing—not a single thing—in this piece of legislation the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) does anything to help problem gamblers not only with class 4 gambling but least of all to put conditions around the Skycity Casino which is basically a law unto itself. It has been given an opportunity to print copious amounts of money. There is no openness and no transparency—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): We’re not on casinos.CLAYTON MITCHELL: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. To me that is very hypocritical when we are coming down so hard on class 4 gambling. Every cloud has a silver lining. The silver lining to class 4 gambling in this particular instance is the fact of what it does for our communities in so far as the help that it actually commits—$250 million - odd. That number is coming down—the amount of money that is being given to communities sporting clubs cultural clubs schools arts clubs and the plethora of other community groups and organisations and events that use that money to help get those events under way. I do not believe that that is a tax—as was said by Mr Iain Lees-Galloway—on the poor people. The vast majority of people—as we have already outlined and agreed on on both sides of the floor—actually gamble willingly and have it under control. The position that we hold is that we as a society need to be doing absolutely everything possible as a Government to ensure that we capture and help those people who need the help—which again this bill does not particularly address and I think that is a larger issue—the helplines etc. where somebody can go to actually help themselves get through it.We have heard of facial recognition technology and pre-commit cards. They have tried player information display systems and PODs in certain outlets to see whether having breaks in between gambling is going to help. The reality is that this will actually help drive the people who like to gamble into those large casinos. This is not going to do anything but shut down some of these small operations. We have heard from the Greens saying that these bars operate with the basis of their business being gambling. Well that has been long outlawed. That stopped in the early 2000s. If your primary business in a licensed premises was to have gaming machines and secondary was food and alcohol then of course those licences were revoked. Your primary business in licensed premises whether it be an on-licence or a club is entertainment social engagement—having a beer watching the rugby catching up with your friends having a meal or whatever. Subsequent to that obviously some of those facilities allow themselves to have a gaming machine room. Of course that is putting as much money back into our communities for those community groups that need that money the most.The reason why we cannot support this bill—we put in an amendment at the Committee of the whole House stage adding section 30A to the bill through Supplementary Order Paper 95. We would like to say that it was close but we were the only party that actually voted for it. But it was close in so far as there have been some changes already around allowing commission-based payments to licensed premises as being a way of funding it. “Reasonable actual and necessary” is an absolutely antiquated clunky and ambiguous way of trying to determine how much we are going to pay as a site rental for those premises that choose to have them. The reality is that payments do need to be made. There are costs involved in hosting those machines. There is good that comes out of parts of this sector of the market of class 4 gambling. So we cannot support it because of course the ability to charge 1.5 percent of the gross turnover which is in line with other areas in the gambling sector—TAB and Lotto for example; it is in line with that—was shot down in the House. So we will not be putting our support into this.I would like to now just get to a couple of things that New Zealand First does commend within the bill which I think are very commendable aspects of it and one of them is openness and transparency. Nobody wants to see behind-door deals with societies and with bar owners or operators or licensed premises and those community groups that are seeking funding. Over the decades because there has been about 20 years of this going on there has been a small group of people who have taken advantage of this silver lining in the cloud if you like and taken it for their own personal gain as opposed to what it was designed for. And they have given the industry in my view at times a bad name. It has come up a few times and I can certainly give you some specifics. But I am not here to go into those specifics. Most largely this industry is acting well and truly within the confines of the law and the intent that it was designed to do.But having it open and transparent understanding how those grants are allocated and making sure that there is no degree of separation or any—what is the term that they use—conflicts of interest when those grants have been made I think is a very commendable thing and certainly well supported by New Zealand First. The simplification in compliance I think is very important and over the years what I have seen with some of those Department of Internal Affairs inspectors is that the laws have been open to interpretation. And those Department of Internal Affairs officers and inspectors who have come into licensed premises to inspect them have had completely conflicting and differences of opinion from one operator to another and from one Department of Internal Affairs officer to another. So tightening that up certainly and simplifying that aspect is going to be a great help to the people who could certainly be affected.Finally I will finish by saying that having the improvement in the efficiency for appeals more open and transparent is certainly going to help things as well and will make this industry more streamlined moving forward into the future. We are very sad to say that we cannot support it. We made our position very very clear at the start with regards to the 1.5 percent commission payments for site operators. That was certainly not an over-the-top figure but one that we thought was balanced and certainly was easy to figure out. But in saying that our support does not go with this bill. We support a majority of what is in it. Thank you.