Hague Kevin: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:944. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):It is my pleasure to take a call on this matter. Sport serves a number of different functions: it entertains; it fosters a national or community spirit or identity and pride; and it inspires others to activity which is particularly important in this country or to endeavour of other sorts. So sport plays a pretty vital function in our society and in societies around the world. I believe I am probably more of a cricket tragic than Kris Faafoi and I wear the badge with some honour.Carmel Sepuloni: And you have the moustache.KEVIN HAGUE: Yes it is approaching the Merv Hughes moustache. Certainly in the moustache-growing competition in the House at the moment I believe I am ahead by more a head.When sport is not a genuine competition though all of those functions it serves are compromised. In modern sport the twin scourges have been doping and match fixing. I am an inveterate follower of the Tour de France and professional road cycling. It has become a sport that is very difficult to watch or to have any kind of stake in because of the level of doping in that sport. When we watch the Tour de France we simply do not know whether people are competing fairly or not and therefore whether the competition is real or not. And similarly actually some aspects of my great love cricket have also become difficult to watch for that same reason. We have seen Lou Vincent’s revelations. We are watching the court case in the UK involving Chris Cairns and the Indian Premier League. When I look at the Indian Premier League I do not know whether I can trust what I see on my TV screen as to whether or not it is a fair competition.In the field of gambling it is pretty much a truism that the house always wins. So whether it is a casino or pokie machines or a lottery or indeed sports betting those who bet often enough and to a sufficient level will pretty well always lose unless the odds are stacked or unless the match or the sport in which they are betting is in some way fixed. It is one of the reasons that I loathe sports betting because it has introduced into sport the very strong incentive to skew the odds to make it an unfair competition in order to maximise profitability from betting activity.There are two kinds of harm that emerge from that. One is the harm from the skewed betting activity itself whereby people are effectively defrauded by those who have procured the fixing of the match because the odds on which they have betted do not reflect the actual probability of the events on which they have betted. So that is one type of harm. The other type of harm is the attack that I have described in fact on the integrity of sport itself. This is a bill that sets out to deal particularly with the second of those problems to defend the integrity of sport and the Green Party is proud to support that intention and will continue to support this bill.It is the second reading so I want to express my thanks to the officials who worked to support the Law and Order Committee. There was good advice from Sport New Zealand. I thank the submitters on the bill. It is interesting to learn here in this debate that actually there was some debate over who would be submitting on that bill and I look forward to hearing more about that matter. I was surprised by the small number of submissions—perhaps that was no coincidence. Maybe that is a topical reference to the subject of this bill.The submissions that we did receive—and I subbed in on the select committee towards the end of its process—were largely supportive of the bill. They made a small number of points proposing changes. For the most part those proposed changes were ones that were unnecessary because the matters raised were already dealt with by law elsewhere or because a deliberate policy choice was being made—and appropriately in my view—to not take that particular course. So for example we have this minor amendment to the Crimes Act rather than specific legislation on match fixing. Another example is the approach to taking a rather narrow focus on particular aspects of match fixing rather than addressing all of the possible aspects. Those were appropriate choices.There are two further points that I want to make. First of all there is one change that was recommended by the select committee and the Minister for Sport and Recreation Jonathan Coleman whom I join with others in congratulating on his appointment to that portfolio. This was around removal of a qualification that was in the original first draft of the bill that could have been used as a defence by those who actually were guilty of match fixing and we certainly support that change to the bill.The other point that I want to place on record is that the view of the select committee—and I take it that it will be the view of this Parliament and therefore I place it into Hansard—is that the intention of this bill is that all of those who are associated with the chain of procurement of match fixing or spot fixing should be captured by the wording of this bill. It is important to state that the Legislation Advisory Committee did raise a doubt as to whether the originator of the procurement of match fixing or spot fixing would be caught by this bill. The advice that the select committee received from prosecuting authorities and from Sport New Zealand and our own analysis was that the bill would be adequate to catch that originator who probably is the most culpable of all of those in the chain but for the avoidance of doubt I want to place that on record in Hansard.So I am looking forward to the Cricket World Cup at the beginning of next year and looking forward in particular to a Cricket World Cup just that little bit more confident that what I will be seeing is a genuine competition in which the Black Caps do as well as they possibly can. Thank you.