Davis Kelvin: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDavis Kelvin: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:991. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau):As a brand-spanking-new member of the Law and Order Committee I have not been privy to the passage of this bill through the House up until this stage but as a self-confessed couch potato sports-mad—Jacinda Ardern: Well qualified.KELVIN DAVIS: Yes well I do consider myself well qualified—in fact I know I am the unluckiest guy never to be considered to be an All Black but despite that—Mike Sabin: There’s a queue of us.KELVIN DAVIS: There is a queue of us. There are a number of us who have just felt that if only the breaks had gone our way we would all be there along with Richie and Dan and the rest of them.I have to say that it brought back terrible memories too when the member from New Zealand First Clayton Mitchell started raising those historical issues such as the 1995 World Cup and that deceit—Suzie the tea lady how dare she bring down the hopes of a nation? Not to mention the referee in 1905 who denied Bob Deans that try—it was the saddest day of my life I have to say.The member the Hon Trevor Mallard raised a number of points though about the passage of this bill through the whole parliamentary process. I had to ask him what the issues actually were and he was saying that the select committee did not ask the sporting bodies to come in and explain their side of the story as this went through. I do take his point that it would have been really good to hear from Sport New Zealand to understand its thinking and from the New Zealand Rugby Union New Zealand Rugby League and New Zealand Cricket. It would be good to actually hear what best practice is in terms of preventing match fixing. Look I am not sure what best practice is. That is why it would be good for these organisations to tell us what it is they are actually doing already to prevent match fixing from going on.As we have heard—again from the New Zealand First member—who would have thought that Lance Armstrong would get away with what he did for so many years? We all just thought he was an awesome athlete and a machine on the cycle but we did not realise that in reality he was taking banned substances to improve his performance.I would really like to know some statistical information around where match fixing normally occurs. Which countries? Which sports? Are sportsmen more prone to match fixing when they are overseas or is it back here in New Zealand? Which nations and which sports are most prone to match fixing?Again someone else raised a point about Lou Vincent. We thought New Zealand cricket was squeaky clean and there was no way any member of the Black Caps or any other New Zealand national teams would even consider match fixing. Of course we have sadly been proved wrong—that in fact our New Zealand athletes can be as guilty as anyone else.It also raised the tragic circumstances around Hansie Cronje the South African cricket captain. He was a national icon and a national hero. Nobody ever thought that he would be involved in match fixing. I am actually told that his tragic death a few years later in a plane crash was not actually so much an accident; that was actually part of the cartels and syndicates actually getting their own back on him for fessing up to match fixing and implicating a whole lot of other people.Coming down to the title again the Hon Trevor Mallard has said that in 2006 the Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill was first mooted. It could have been implemented in any year—2007 2008 right through until 2014 which is the date that is in the title at this stage. As he says we are not interested in making sure this is the Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Act of 2015. We are happy for it to be 2014 but we are not happy that the process of this bill was truncated through the Law and Order Committee and that we did not have those sporting bodies that I have spoken about Sport New Zealand and the Rugby Union come in to talk.Of course the TAB is an organisation that we should not forget in our deliberations. I have to admit I have got a little TAB account. I put $50 in it some time back. I must admit I have not become a millionaire because of it. In fact it has been sitting in abeyance for the last 6 months or so because of a few bad bets. I have to say that the Thames Valley versus Buller rugby matches take on a whole new significance when you put 5 bucks on which way that game is going to go. Otherwise I would not necessarily watch it. The TAB would be an organisation that would be really good to hear from in terms of the way it monitors bets and whether or not it sees trends what sorts of things spark its interest if it sees massive amounts of money going on to real underdogs or anything like that. Again I am speculating but it would be good to know just what it does as the TAB to make sure that match fixing or bad bets do not get laid.With that I would just like to reiterate that it is unfortunate that those organisations did not get to come in and speak to the select committee. I am interested to listen to further argument and debate on this issue. Kia ora.