Mitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 04 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4361. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the second reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3). It is a bill that I have been excited to stand up and speak to. In fact the last time I stood up and spoke to this piece of legislation Mr Iain Lees-Galloway got himself into such a state that at one stage I thought he was going to have a coronary. So before coming into the House today Mr Iain Lees-Galloway I checked that we have actually got a defibrillator on standby. In case you raise your temperature we can actually resuscitate you. I would like to also say we would like to be able to support this piece of legislation. New Zealand First would like to be able to support this piece of legislation and with a little bit of mild tweeting—to use Judith Collins’ terminology; just a mild bit of tweaking—I think we could possibly get to a state where New Zealand First could get to a position where we do actually support this.There are a number of clauses in this new piece of amending legislation that do actually benefit the community and the overall need to return as much money as we possibly can to the people within our community who need it the most which is a big topic of recent times. In fact in question time today we spoke about the volunteers in the rural fire brigades who are out there accessing some of the money that is gained by class 4 gambling to buy those defibrillators which Iain Lees-Galloway I hope will not have to use today. There are those surf clubs that Mark Mitchell has spoken about that use it to buy equipment that saves lives. There are also community groups church groups and schools. Just about every sector of our community receives a massive benefit from class 4 gambling.New Zealand First is not standing up here condoning class 4 gambling. We are not out there saying: “Goodness me you should take up gambling. It’s a fantastic pastime.” but certainly gambling has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years and the vast majority—the absolute vast majority—of New Zealanders are gambling responsibly. I will talk about harm minimisation and some of the ideas that Denise Roche and some of the other parties have put forward about harm minimisation which is of course the buzzword. In fact there have been a number of members in the House who struggled with actually pronouncing the words “harm minimisation”. Some of the ideas are just very impractical. They actually do not do anything towards assisting class 4 gambling or the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) by reducing harm.In actual fact what you are looking at doing if some of the ideas are implemented is driving people out of their little wee rural spots their urban sanctuaries their homes their little wee local pubs and the RSAs and having them head into the large casinos. None of this legislation captures anything to do with Skycity and the big corporations which are gaining the biggest benefit out of those small closures in those little wee townships the hamlets around the country. If we talk about harm minimisation we should look at how 27000 gaming machines have been reduced over the last 10 years down to under 17000 gaming machines and of course there are 1300-odd licensed premises around the country. That is around 13 machines per venue if you average it out.What we do support in this piece of legislation is openness transparency and of course reducing bureaucracy. But some of the legislation that is being proposed now—although this Government and the select committee have taken steps towards making it more palatable. Like I say New Zealand First is getting close to being able to say: “Yes that is a sensible common-sense approach to gambling in this country.” However we will be putting some Supplementary Order Papers forward in the Committee stage of this bill which we hope if they are sensibly supported—we certainly have been out there speaking to the people.I know there were 126 people who submitted on this bill. It was moderately supported. However there were some serious concerns and I will talk about those serious concerns because one of those concerns is around section 118 and conflicts of interest. The conflict of interest provision which is around the key persons really with the size of New Zealand is going to restrict firstly a lot of people in this country from receiving funding and support for their community organisations and secondly the organisations themselves being able to support the people who are providing this service to the community. So that issue is pertaining specifically—I am just going to have to go to my notes to read this out. The proposed amendments to section 118 of the Gambling Act will make it a criminal offence for gaming societies’ key persons to purchase a meal or drink from any of the 1300 bars and restaurants that host gaming machines offer or accept a ticket to any event stay at a hotel chain if the hotel chain has gaming machines at one of its hotels have a game of tenpin bowling if the tenpin bowling venue has gaming machines purchase an Anzac poppy—for goodness’ sake—from an RSA if the RSA has a gaming machine place any form of bet with a TAB or with the New Zealand Racing Board if it has gaming machines at some of its venues or purchase a bottle of wine in an area that is controlled by a licensing trust.This piece of legislation makes it a criminal offence that encapsulatesnot only those people within that bill but also the people serving. So now it is a criminal offence for an innocent staff member at one of those venues—buying or supplying that person with a poppy or giving them a beer makes the staff member criminally liable. That is a serious piece of legislation. With the size of this country being 4.5 million - odd people six degrees of separation does not actually work in New Zealand. It is more like two degrees of separation in New Zealand because you do not have to go far down the road to find somebody who knows somebody else in the country. It is pretty much going to implicate and involve people in illegal activity inadvertently. That is not the intended part of this bill; we know that. But unless this part is tightened up even more than it has been with the adjustments that have made we cannot support this bill.The other part that we support is the commission-based payments. We have heard from a number of members. In fact Mark Mitchell says that this will actually reduce the red tape. I actually support the idea that paying commission-based payments at 16 percent makes sense but when I hear other members in the House saying—and we did hear it the other day from Adrian Rurawhe—that they want that commissioned payment capped that does not make sense. To me capping something with increased turnover comes with increased costs to run the establishment. If we talked about wear and tear on the facilities for example—Mr Assistant Speaker I see there is a little bit of a perplexed look. I thought maybe you did not understand where those increased costs will come. There will be increased costs. More staff will be required. As the costs go up that 16 percent should stay where it is. It should not be capped because there are more costs involved with it. This piece of legislation is not about creating wealth for those venue operators. It is about making it to a point where it is actually viable enough to maintain it and sustain it.When I look at the gambling around this country which brings $300 million—$300 million—into our communities our schools and our sports clubs I see that we need to make sure that we look after it notwithstanding some of the fears and concerns that the House is having around problem gamblers. We need to be doing more to assist them. At the moment they make up 0.03 of a percent. It is minor but I am not saying we should discount them. I am just saying that there is far more good that is coming out of this piece of legislation. The actual reasonable and necessary cost of conducting gambling is at 16 percent for a commission-based payment and it makes sense to not cap that. If you talk about nine machines which is a reasonable number of machines for a new venue opening up and we talked about $5000 of turnover within that gaming lounge at 16 percent that is going to give you a return of around $800. Under the current standing it works out to be about $100 per machine. So in actual fact the vast majority of licensed venues around this country under this proposed legislation without the 16 percent cap—16 percent as a commission-based payment—will actually take a drop in turnover. This is not about making money; this is about a sensible approach for long-term sustainability of gaming in New Zealand.It was not that long ago—I can go back to the 1990s—that there were discussions in this House with regard to the future of gambling in New Zealand. It was centred on the model that was happening in Australia and the deregulation of gaming machines over there. It is fair to say that taxes went up over there but its system works. In fact huge amounts of money were invested in New Zealand by Australian companies and by some Australian Government organisations because they thought New Zealand was going to go down that track and we have not. I am currently comfortable that what we are setting up in this country for gambling providing we are being sensible about what we are doing is going to look after the vast majority of the people who need the money the most—those people who are in those community groups and organisations. We cannot support this current legislation as it sits on the Table today. I hope that when we get to the Committee stage we will have a good robust discussion about what we can implement and change. Perhaps I might need to get around and socialise some of those ideas with our people across the bench there. If we can get a little bit more sense out of them then we may be able to support this in the future. We cannot support the bill as it stands.