Tisch Lindsay: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tisch Lindsay: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17799. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 I want to draw attention to Part 2. Rather than talking about it during the Committee stage I want to speak about it now. Clause 11 relates to the Gambling Act. There are two parts in that Act that I want to draw the House’s attention to. National will certainly support the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) but I want to look at the Gambling Act and the Gambling (Problem Gambling Levy) Regulations and the value of the weightings given to W1 and W2 in the levy formula. 
The recommendations to Cabinet a couple of years ago suggested that the weighting should be 0.8 based on presentations and 0.2 based on player expenditure. There is not any substantive information around in terms of presentations; many figures are pulled out of the air to justify the weightings based on people who are fronting up for problem-gambling assistance. That is why the Cabinet policy committee back in 2001 suggested those figures. But the regulations state that 0.9 or 90 percent of the levy will be based on presentations and 0.1 or 10 percent on expenditure. It is certainly National’s view that those figures are unrealistic. They cannot be substantiated in any way. Probably a more realistic figure would be 0.7 or 70 percent for presentations and 0.3 or 30 percent based on expenditure or turnover. Those would be fairly conservative estimates but certainly more realistic than what we see in the regulations now. 
The second point I draw the House’s attention to is the levy that has been set. It has been interesting to note that according to the answers to a number of parliamentary questions I have asked the levies have gone up substantially over the last few years. In the 2002-03 year the sum was $9.8 million; in 2003-04 it was $12 million; and in a Department of Internal Affairs document the figure for the 2004-07 period comes out at about $54.5 million. That is a substantial increase in the gambling levy on gaming operators given that they are also required to have harm minimisation programmes and given the increased compliance costs like electronic monitoring and the reduced site rentals. When we look at the combination of all the increased compliance costs and the lack of money going back into the industry we see that the people who lose out are the charities that are dependent on these funds to fund their operations. 
While National accepts that there needs to be a problem gambling levy we submit that the levy is not based on factual material. The Ministry of Health which will take over the handling of the problem gambling levy has not been able to supply me with substantive information on what the figure of $54.5 million over the next 3 years has been based on. Just as with the harm minimisation programmes a programme that is currently available in Australia and that could be used extensively in New Zealand has been overlooked and we are finding that exorbitant consultancy are fees being charged. In fact I am told that the charitable clubs in New Zealand will probably spend about $1 million on their harm minimisation programmes whereas programmes can be bought off the shelf in Australia for less than $10000. 
The point I am making is that there are huge costs that gaming operators are having to contend with. At the end of the day the losers are those organisations out in the community that are dependent on charitable funding to run their operations. 
Bill read a second time.