Tisch Lindsay: Racing Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Racing Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:606;Page:3952] 
LINDSAY TISCH (NZ National—Piako) 
: 
 The genesis of this debate goes back many many years. In fact if we were to go back to December 1970— 
Rodney Hide 
: Good heavens! 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: Yes that long ago. There was a report commissioned 33 years ago called  
Horse Racing Trotting and Dog Racing in New Zealand 
. It was a report of a royal commission of inquiry chaired by Sir Thaddeus McCarthy so it was known as the McCarthy report. That report was done 33 years ago and some of the issues that were identified at that time are worth recording now because in my view not much has changed. 
 If we turn to page 140 we see under “Disabilities of the Present Control Structure”: “We have a strong view that the present administrative and control structure has resulted in three main disabilities. First its impotence or reluctance in making decisions where the two codes are in conflict. The evidence here is conclusive. It may be seen in such unsolved problems as those of further totalisation licences the allocation of licences existing in future between codes and the allocation of race meeting dates and the distribution of TAB profits.” Those points were made 33 years ago and we are seeing today in this bill exactly the same sort of points being made. The title of the bill could be the “Restructure of the McCarthy Report of December 1970 Bill”. 
More recently we had the Ernst and Young  
Report on the Performance and Efficiency Audit of the New Zealand Racing Industry Board 
 dated 3 July 1997. That report’s priority areas for action are now included in this bill. They include a simplified Racing Act which enables the industry to act on its own problems and merging the Racing Industry Board and the TAB to effect better coordination of policy and delivery. That is exactly what this bill will do: it will merge the Racing Industry Board and the TAB. The third point is driving down industry costs particularly through an early review of administrative structures. This report was done in 1997 and as I said the genesis of the bill we are debating tonight can be traced right back to that date. So this bill could be titled the “Ernst and Young Revival Bill” or the “Ernst and Young Bring It Again Bill” or whatever we want to call it because a very comprehensive report in 1997 about the racing industry identified what needs to be done. That report talked about efficiency and effectiveness and that is certainly something we are concerned about with this bill. 
More recently 3 years ago a draft bill was prepared for the then Minister. A lot of changes have been made to the draft bill—just little words which will come up during the debate—and we now see those changes in the current bill. Basically this document dated 20 November 2000 includes the comments points and items in the bill that we are debating tonight. 
In more recent times the Minister commissioned a very comprehensive report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. It is very unfortunate that tonight we are debating a bill that was deliberated on before the recommendations of that July report commissioned by the Minister were available. We actually finished deliberating on this bill back in May of last year. We were ready to debate it in the House—and National supported it—back in May to coincide with the 1 August calendar date for the racing industry. There has been delay after delay then these reports have come out the first one being the PricewaterhouseCoopers report which has some very very good points in it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Just before I call the next member I remind members that the debate on clause 1 is not a wide-ranging debate. I ask members to adhere to that when they give their speeches to the Committee.