Rurawhe Adrian: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRurawhe Adrian: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7311. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise to take a call in the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3). Can I summarise Labour’s position on this bill. In the first reading there were some things that we had great concern about and there were things that we fully supported. I think the passage of this legislation—and we genuinely sat on the Government Administration Committee through that process to try to make this bill the best that it can be. On balance we came to the conclusion that there was more good in this bill than our other concerns and so I stand here to support this bill in its third reading.I want to acknowledge the Minister of Internal Affairs for bringing this all together. I also want to acknowledge him because the key major issue that we had with this bill was about removing the prohibition on commission-based payments for venues. There were a number of submitters on that particular issue and we heard very clearly what their concerns were. I want to thank the Minister because during the Committee stage he made it quite clear that the model that they will end up with under the regulation that this bill sets out to put in place will not incentivise gambling. We will closely monitor that but I want to thank the Minister for making that statement in the House. Also it kind of reinforces that by reviewing class 4 gambling so I do want to acknowledge that as well.The commission-based payments—as I said we did have concerns about that. It could actually incentivise gambling in those venues.For a moment too I want to talk about two particular submitters. I will not give their names but they shared their journey through addiction—addiction to gambling—and it was very humbling to hear them tell their story and also for them to share that information with us. I think it helped us not only to understand their situation but to keep that in our minds while we were making decisions and recommendations for changes to this bill.The transparency issue was another issue that members of the public talked about along with people within the gambling sector. They were very concerned about one particular area around conflict of interest and what that actually meant. From a number of submitters’ views they highlighted the fact that if this particular clause were to stay unchanged then basically all of their workers would not be able to be paid. I think we in the select committee came up with a very good solution to that. It seems to have satisfied everyone so I am very pleased that that particular clause has been able to be included into that and is no longer an issue.I want to go back to the original intent of the principal Act the Gambling Act 2003 at the time it was passed by the Labour Government. The reason why there was a prohibition on commission payment and why it would be on a cost recovery basis was that the true benefit of class 4 gambling was that profits would be distributed to communities. That was the basis of having cost recovery rather than commission payment.As we all know there have been a number of issues along the way around both the distribution of funds. For example as was highlighted by one of my colleagues Jenny Salesa in her electorate in South Auckland Manukau East there are a number of gambling venues but when you see where the funds are distributed they are not distributed totally within her community. So this bill brings greater transparency around the distribution of those funds so that they stay within the community that they are collected from. That is a good thing because that was the original intent of the principal Act.I go back to joining up the issue around the original intent of the bill to make certain that as many funds as possible can be distributed into the communities. This bill—and I have seen the modelling—potentially means that an additional approximately $10 million will be distributed to communities and that is a really good thing. That is another reason why we are supporting this bill.If I can summarise our position notwithstanding that our concerns I think have been greatly addressed since the Committee stage we will still be watching very closely to see what the venue payment model ends up being. I think it is important also to note that a number of submitters were disappointed that more harm minimisation was not included in this particular bill and there were a number of submitters whom I have mentioned in earlier readings who promoted the idea of a pre-commitment system for gambling. We certainly hope that that becomes part of the Minister’s review into class 4 gambling because I think that is a very important issue—that we ensure that we put every possible mechanism in place to ensure that the harm caused by gambling can be minimised. This seems to me to be the most effective way of doing that for class 4 gambling—that gamblers have to pre-commit to a maximum amount of money that they are willing to use or to spend on class 4 gambling which is loaded on to the card and a maximum amount of time. The technology as I understand it already exists for that to happen and so we would be hoping that in future review any legislation that comes from that review would include those sorts of measures.So as I said I am pleased to take this call in the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) and I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.