Mitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7096. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I really want to get to where I left off from last time and the points we have talked about so far from New Zealand First including the things that we do actually support in this bill—and there are a number of things that we do support.However there is one major glaring issue that we feel this bill fails to address and is going to cause some issues in the future although with that address I have to acknowledge also that through this Committee stage an amendment that was submitted by the Hon Peter Dunne has enabled commission-based payments to take place.We have heard the umbrage that Labour and the Greens have taken with regard to commission-based payments. However I feel like New Zealand First has quite comfortably outlined the positive nature of that in itself in so far as how it currently works in the Act is that working out what site venue payment an operator receives is done through real actual and necessary costs.That is a very very cumbersome very very clunky way of working it out and it happens a few times throughout the year. The venue operator has to work out the entire size of their premises. They have to work out how large their gaming area is compared with the whole size of their premises. They have to work out what floor coverings they have got what wall coverings they have got and what light fittings they have. They have to work out what the turnover of the bar is and what relationship of wages are paid to the bar versus the—as you can already see I can see people looking down and shaking their heads in disbelief that this is what goes on on a daily basis to work out a site venue payment.What happens in other sectors of the gambling community—and now we talk about the TAB and Lotto—is it is all done on a gross turnover as a commission-based payment.The TAB for example I think gets around about 3 percent of the gross turnover and the Lotteries Commission gets about 1.5 percent of the gross turnover—which is similar to what we have put through on Supplementary Order Paper 95 as an amendment. When we did our initial calculations—because we think commission-based payment is very simple; off the bat you can work out on a weekly and daily basis what your site payment is going to be—it was hardly about maximising your profits to get as much site rental as you can. There is legislation in place that stops any site operator and any organisation from doing that.What our amendment simply does is by looking at your gross turnover rather than your net turnover—which was one of the calculations that we ran through; we looked at 16 percent of net turnover originally—it accounts for the variations and fluctuations in prize money that is paid out on a weekly daily and monthly basis. That variation creates a lot of uncertainty with those site payments that are being paid out. Some weeks you will get far more than in others and some weeks you will get far less than in others. So what we have looked at is a fair and reasonable 1.5 percent of gross turnover for those site operators so that they know where they stand on a weekly basis.We are talking for an average nine-machine site rental around about I would say $1350 to $1470 per week in site rentals—for nine machines on a site that is operating quite strongly—so we are not hardly talking about profiteering.Our concern is that this bill has missed the opportunity to do that and therefore we cannot support this bill moving forward. We certainly acknowledge the positive steps with regard to the direction that this bill has taken from when we had our first reading to where it is now.I also would like to just bring to the attention of the public and the members in the Committee that the contradiction that we see through gambling throughout New Zealand is one that needs to be recognised. When we compare it with the likes of Skycity Casino—which is affected by none of these laws and is nothing to do with what we are talking about here—on average it pays around about $3 million per annum out to its communities with a turnover of around about $500 million. Compare that with the class 4 gambling machines around the country which turn over around about $700 million and return around about $280 million to those communities—those sports clubs community clubs groups organisations and schools that really need that money to get through and survive. So another part of the bill again that we think is great is the simplification of the compliance and the cutting of the red tape to actually enable more money to be returned back to the communities and back to the people who need it the most.We see some positive steps moving in the right direction but unfortunately we cannot support this bill unless there are some major changes with regard to the commission-based payments at 1.5 percent of gross turnover. Thank you.