Hague Kevin: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13277. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):Malo elelei Mr Assistant Speaker. It is an interesting thing is it not that in this House we tend not to recognise the backgrounds that each of us has had before we came to the House and the expertise that sits in this Chamber day after day. Some of my expertise is in the fields of public health and harm minimisation—fields in which I worked for a number of decades before coming to this House. In that context and because of that expertise I was engaged in the late 1990s—atime when services for the treatment of problem gamblers were being shifted into the health sector and becoming a health responsibility—to do qualitative research to determine what health services would be required to treat the problem-gambling phenomenon that we would expect to observe. In that project I spoke with service providers people like the Salvation Army I spoke with many problem gamblers themselves and I spoke to their families and in each case the story that I got from that whole set of people was a story of misery and of loss of hope—of people who had lost their jobs lost their houses lost their families lost their happiness and hope and in some cases lost their lives.In that project I also spoke to the companies that made their livings from gambling. I spoke with casinos. I spoke with the TAB. The pokies sector at that time actually hardly existed in New Zealand. Strangely enough those organisations did not see the problem as being as big as did those who actually lived with it. That was a problem because at that time the services for problem gambling were being funded by levies from the industry itself—in other words being paid for by the problem gamblers on a voluntary basis by the industry. My recommendations about the services that were required to effectively deal with that problem actually fell on stony ground because the industry was unhappy about paying for the extent of the services that would prove to be necessary. It is a failure once again of voluntary regulation.The public health approach is one that recognises the limited point of working with individuals and focuses instead on creating public policy and social and economic environments around communities that support change. It focuses also on empowering communities. What we know from community views about problem gambling is that they want this industry out of their communities. The gambling industry has the reverse motivation. It achieves a vastly disproportionate share of its profits from the misery caused by problem gambling. Its commercial interest is served by encouraging problem gambling. For that reason I give this prediction in the House today: the player tracking and pre-commit cards that could result from regulation will not be seen for regulation under this Government because they are not in the interests of the gambling industry.Like other speakers in the House today I acknowledge the bill as introduced by Te Ururoa Flavell and I sympathise with the terrible dilemma that he faced in relation to this bill. But the bill that we vote on here today is a victory for the gambling industry a loss for communities and a loss for all of those who seek to limit the harm from this terrible terrible industry. It is a sad day for New Zealand.