Bradford Sue: Gambling Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Gambling Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:622;Page:18110] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Gambling Amendment Bill aims to allow licensing trust members and trustees of community trusts to be involved in decisions about the operation of pokie machines and the distribution of profits. Although the Green Party fundamentally believes that overall we should drastically cut the number of pokie machines in our communities we do have some sympathy for the anomalous position licensing trusts have found themselves in after the passage of the 2003 Gambling Act which allows clubs and the TAB to run their own machines and manage the proceeds but not the licensing trusts. 
Although the Green Party did not back the Gambling Bill as a whole and voted against it at the time we did support those aspects of the legislation aimed at ending the power often held by pub management over the running of pokie machines and their control over consequent funding decisions. It was clear to many people in different parts of the country that some proprietors of non-casino gaming machines all too often allowed their own prejudices to determine who got what and who did not get anything at all. On top of that allegations of trade-offs and contra deals were fairly common from grants being conditional upon sports teams drinking on the premises or staying in certain motels through to one or two criminal cases whereby major outright corruption in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars was the order of the day. 
In rightly legislating to bring this situation to an end the passage of the Gambling Act also left behind a somewhat contradictory consequence. RSAs workingmen’s clubs the TAB and racing clubs could run pokie machines and use the proceeds pretty much as they chose for their own organisational purposes but licensing trusts were put into the same category as all those societies large and small that have been specifically set up to manage pokie machines and distribute the profits and in which key persons are not permitted to have any role in decisions about funding. 
Licensing trust members have made a good case to Parliament that they deserve to be treated differently from organisations like the Scottwood Trust the Lion Foundation and all the other charity gaming associations whose management and boards are unelected or certainly are not elected by any form of public ballot. Licensing trusts on the other hand are far more open entities whose board members are elected by the community every 3 years in elections conducted under the provisions of the Local Electoral Act. Those boards members are directly accountable to the people who vote them in and are thus in a significantly different position from gaming machine societies. The licensing trusts are also subject to a whole range of regulatory controls outside the purview of the Gambling Act such as the Public Audit Act and they are open to audit by the Auditor-General. Licensing trust accounts must be open to public inspection and licensing trust members cannot benefit personally in any way from the activities of their outlets. 
There appear to be only five licensing trusts that operate pokie machines in their own venues. It seems fair that they should be treated equitably with clubs rather than with charity gaming bodies as the public who vote for their boards would not continue to support them if they for example minimised gaming returns by using the funds to prop up a failing liquor outlet. The big worry the licensing trusts have had is that the new Gambling Act forces them to dismantle and replace the structures they have developed over a long period—structures through which they say they do their best to be fair to all applicants for funding and to maximise the return to the local community. The Invercargill Licensing Trust for example tells us that in 2003-04 it returned 57 percent of gaming profits to local organisations as opposed to most other returns around the country of under 40 percent. 
The bill we are considering for the first time today aims to allow licensing trust members and trustees to reinstate their involvement in decisions about funding from the proceeds of pokie machines on their premises. The Green Party believes that that is simply common sense and we will support the bill. We hope it can be dealt with at the select committee reasonably expeditiously for the sake of all involved. However in saying that I reiterate that our fundamental approach to the gambling industry remains unchanged. We would prefer to see a huge reduction in the number of pokie machines operating in New Zealand and a total revamp of the way the profits of those that remain are distributed. We would also like the many community organisations that now rely on the proceeds of human misery for their continued survival to consider other funding options and the Government and other non-gambling funders to better resource the sector so that groups do not feel obliged to depend on the addictions and desperation of some of our poorest people for the pursuance of their good works. 
However although we live in a country that not only allows a massive proliferation of gambling opportunities but actually endorses and promotes gambling in many forms it is logical that there is equity in the way different proprietors are treated. The Green Party hopes that this bill will be moved reasonably quickly through the House once the Christmas break is over so that the existing longstanding structures used by the licensing trusts will not have to be replaced and trust members can continue to distribute the maximum amount of funding back in their local areas. 
I also hope that I will still be around in Parliament when we pass legislation that will deal with the far more fundamental issues in the gambling sector such as taking the steps needed to reduce the harm done to so many people in our country. Recent figures from the Department of Internal Affairs show that gamblers lost a record $2 billion last year an increase of 9 percent on the year before. Roughly speaking that is $5 million a day much of it taken out of the homes of some of our lowest-income families. Eighty-seven percent of people who sought treatment from the Problem Gambling Foundation said that they have a problem with pokie machines. The figure for Maori women is up to 96 percent. The fact that the proceeds of pokie addictions are then used for the benefit of all sorts of worthy causes should not be an excuse for any values-based group to continue to endorse the industry as seems to be happening if the many letters coming into MPs’ offices at present are anything to go by. 
I look forward to the day when we have a Government with the courage to implement a truly responsible gambling bill unlike the only partially responsible one that passed last year. Meanwhile in the name of equity the Green Party will be supporting this minor amendment to what is actually a fatally flawed Act.