Hague Kevin: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1161. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):I think along with all the other parties in Parliament the Green Party will be continuing to support the Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill here at the third reading today. I want to make just a few remarks moving on from the bill. First I will pick up on some of the remarks made by the Minister for Sport and Recreation in his opening comments around some of what he hoped for in the Cricket World Cup that we are looking forward to early next year. He said that he was looking forward to a fair contest and looking forward to a contest in which the element of chance was not removed. I think that is a good way of expressing one of the objectives of the bill. And I guess perhaps more generally another is to be watching players in this case in cricket but actually in any sport who—we are confident and trust—are playing to the extent of their abilities and striving to their utmost to achieve success. I think those are good ambitions for the Cricket World Cup series and for sport going forward.I have spoken in previous debates about some of the objectives that we have for sport. It is an entertainment for us. It is a means of fostering national or community pride or identity. It also serves the function of inspiration: inspiration to further physical activity—and goodness only knows our country needs some of that—but also inspiration for striving in other endeavours. So sport is not just a game; it actually has much greater importance for us.That is why match fixing is such a blight because it causes two kinds of harm. First of all it results in people who have placed bets in sports betting being defrauded of their money and more broadly it defrauds the observers of that sport—the rest of us—from achieving those other objectives that I have described. More broadly it compromises the very integrity of the sport and cuts to the very heart of why we celebrate sport.However it seems to us in the Green Party that the Government’s motivation in proceeding with this bill is not so much any of those particular harms but rather the commercial risk faced by the betting and gambling industry. That appears to be the motivation behind this bill. In my significant experience of interaction in trying to plan services to deal with people with gambling problems that is an industry that shows an extraordinary lack of ethical standards or indeed care for its customers. Indeed just today research was released from the Department of Internal Affairs using mystery shoppers saying that in almost none of a range of casinos and providers of pokie machine venues were the statutory obligations the mandatory statutory measures that are supposed to protect consumers of those gambling services from harm actually met. What that is talking about is an industry that places very little regard on its statutory obligations and even less regard on the welfare of its customers. I wonder therefore whether this is actually an industry that deserves the protection that Government intends to provide with this bill.In previous debates I have raised I guess my personal view that sports betting has been an utter blight on sport in New Zealand and around the world. I think it is evident that if sports betting is permitted it will create powerful incentives for matches to be fixed for the integrity of sport to be compromised and for sports betters to be defrauded of their money. I think that if we were to take a helicopter view what actually is the big problem here? What is the problem that as a Parliament we ought to be trying to address? I think it is at least arguable that the problem is not so much match fixing as sports betting. It is interesting to hear the comments of other participants in this debate who have noted that this is a very brief bill that the process has been relatively and unnecessarily rushed and who are wondering whether the bill will achieve all of the aims that it has. It is my view that the bill will not stop match fixing. I think it will make some small contribution towards reducing the extent of match fixing. But the existence of sports betting and the powerful commercial incentives that that creates will drive other forms of corrupting sport that evade the provisions of this bill or evade detection. Although this bill is a useful step forward it does not get to the heart of the problem and the Green Party will certainly be looking for other measures that may be necessary in the future to deal with the root cause of the problem.I have also referred in previous debates to match fixing being one of the twin scourges in modern sport. The other one is doping. That is another way in which the integrity of the contest in sport is corrupted and compromised because effectively what we are seeing is not a fair contest between the different competitors or participants in the sporting contest. I think it is at least arguable that sports betting actually lies at the heart of the motivation for some of the doping behaviour that we see in modern sport as well.Mr Deputy Speaker this depending on what progress we make this afternoon on other matters may well be my last contribution in the House this year. If it is I wish you and your team and all other members of the House the very best for a very well-deserved Christmas and New Year break. I hope that some of you may join me on some grassy embankment around the country with the voice—[Interruption] Actually that did not quite come out as I intended—of Bryan Waddle in my ear and some test cricket in front of our eyes. Thank you.