Little Andrew: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11903. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I rise to take a call on the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill and say that I acknowledge the member Te Ururoa Flavell and acknowledge the honourable intentions he had in bringing this bill to the House and addressing what is a growing issue and a growing problem for many communities. He was right in his motivations and in his intentions to want to get some sort of meaningful redress for the issues that we are now seeing emerging in our community.I think in fairness however when we had a look at the original bill it probably treated the issue too crudely. It probably treated the issue with a one-size-fits-all solution. A more shall I say nuanced approach was probably required because the truth is that many Kiwis enjoy a little flutter. They enjoy a day at the races they enjoy getting their Lotto tickets and some indeed enjoy going down to the local RSA to the “cossie club” or to the workingmen’s club—pardon the sexist name but I did not call it that. They go down and they enjoy a bit of camaraderie a bit of fellowship and the odd flutter on the pokies.But there is a more insidious end of the industry too and it is that part of the industry that jacks up deals with hotels with other public bars and makes somewhat dubious arrangements with various sports clubs which are required to patronise the bar. People are required to do various things in order to win grants or rewards from the pokies that occupy particular licensed premises. So Te Ururoa Flavell was right to want to address that issue and those establishments. He was right to want to make sure that we had a set of regulations and a legal framework that reflected the modern era and reflected the modern problems with gambling—in particular the extraordinary growth in the number of pokie machines and the extraordinary growth of the number of those machines outside the more convivial more I think socially aware environments of the “cossie clubs” the workingmen’s clubs and theRSAs.What was clear was that we had a piece of legislation a member’s bill that went to the Commerce Committee that was ripe for good quality discussion and some good attention and refining and it was aiming at thosemischiefs that were really crying out for a remedy. What in fact we had from the Government members on the select committee was a complete denial of the problem and of the issue and a failure to face up through this bill to what was needed and what is needed to address those issues.The bill has come back to the House looking the way we are feeling—that is totally gutted—and it does not deal effectively with the harm minimisation measures that one might expect in the 21st century to see in premises where there are a large number of pokie machines. Really the only meaningful thing it does now is allow the transfer of large numbers of pokie machines from one set of premises under the licensing control of a local authority to another set of premises without reduction and without minimisation. To that extent it simply does not go anywhere near to achieving the original objectives set for it.So from my point of view I feel very disappointed. Here was an opportunity we had as a House albeit through a member’s bill to deal with this issue. In an ideal world it would have been a Government bill. A Government Minister probably the Minister of Health would in an ideal world have taken this issue seriously would have worked with officials and had the benefit of the full power of the bureaucracy to get good advice and good drafting instructions and would have put together a bill that met the problems that we know exist in the community when it comes to gambling. But that is not what this Government did. It left it to Te Ururoa Flavell who has acted honourably and nobly in putting this bill together to try to address this particular problem.This bill still does not address the issue of the pokie trusts the very powerful organisations that control and manipulate not only the presence of the pokie machines but the distribution of their funds. It does nothing to address some pretty untoward behaviour that we know happens where effectively conditions are put on grants and people are required to behave in certain ways. This bill does not deal with that. It does not go anywhere near it. This bill rather than trying to manage effectively the existence and the growth of pokie machines simply lets the existing arrangements continue.We know that the original bill caused some anxiety amongst those members of the community—the RSA clubs and the others the charter clubs—who approached the presence of pokies in their premises somewhat differently. The elderly folk who enjoy going down for a quiet sup with their mates down at their local club and who also occasionally enjoy a flutter need not have felt threatened by this piece of legislation had it been able to be processed properly carefully and with a good set of principles and some good information behind it. But that sadly did not happen. The bill was entirely derailed.I have to say I take some umbrage to be honest. I hear members opposite like Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga who come here crying their crocodile tears worrying about people in the community. He has no concern about them at all. If he was genuinely concerned about the people in Maungakiekie and in other places that he claims to represent or reflect he would have ensured that we had a bill that came back to this House that was in good shape that actually addressed the issues that exist out there and that genuinely brought some harm minimisation measures. Instead what we have is a bill that has been entirely sliced filleted and gutted and anything substantial anything significant and indeed I might add anything positive has been removed from it. That is not the way we ought to be dealing with these sorts of public health issues.These issues we know are capturing a growing number of people. We have the estimate from the Problem Gambling Foundation that anywhere between 10000 and 60000 people in any one year can be affected by problem gambling. That is an issuethat cries out for serious attention. It cries out for serious attention from the Government but in the absence of a Government Minister taking responsibility for it it cries out for attention from this House. When we do have opportunities to address issues like that through bills like this that go to the select committee that is a time for this House to take it seriously. That is a time to come up with through good discussion and getting good advice some practical measures that address the real problems and that leave those who can responsibly enjoy a flutter those who can responsibly enjoy a day at the races and those who can responsibly enjoy an afternoon at the local club to get on and enjoy their time their conviviality and their camaraderie. But those who enter the realm of addiction and problem gambling are the people who need attention.We should not baulk as legislators at passing legislation that poses obligations on those who benefit financially and those who clearly have a financial stake in peddling these devices and these machines and imposing upon them obligations to take responsibility for those who are victims of the activities that they peddle and market. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing unethical about that. That is the responsible thing for us as legislators to do. Here we had an opportunity to do it but we have a Government that is timid in the face of interests like the powerful gambling interests and the powerful pokie trusts. Its members’ knees shake at the mere mention of those interests and they simply do not have it within them to take seriously these particular issues.It is disappointing that we get to this point. From my point of view I will be voting against this bill because it is a bit like the last piece of legislation we considered completely meaningless.