Roche Denise: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 07 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12495. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):I am going to speak several times tonight I think on different parts of this bill the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill. I will refrain from getting too far into detail in my first call. I just want to remind the Committee what this bill was about. I thank the member Te Ururoa Flavell for bringing this bill to the House. Its first reading was passed in May last year and it has been quite a journey quite a ride since then.The bill back then was a beacon of hope. That is what I thought. It was designed to reduce the harm from gambling to reduce the rorts that frequently occur around pokie trusts and to get rid of some of the inequalities that happen with pokie machines being concentrated in high-deprivation areas. The Greens liked this bill because it gave councils and communities the power to cut the number of pokies or eliminate them altogether in their areas. It ensured that 80 percent of the distributable funds went back to the communities where the money was gambled. It did some work in attempting to phase out some of the more negative aspects of the pokie trusts by looking for a reorganisation of them and by allowing councils or other transparently elected committees to be set up to allocate that money. It had the intention of removing racing as an authorised purpose for the distribution of funds because it has always been very strange that since the mid-2000s there has been the ability for pokie gambling to fund another form of gambling—in particular stakes for racehorse owners.The bill was about to implement some problem-gambling harm reduction measures like player tracking and pre-commit cards. That would have given some control back to gamblers some ability for them to put some controls on their behaviour. I take the point that Mr Flavell made that this has not been trialled and it was going to be the first time that it would have been trialled which would have been a brave new step for Aotearoa New Zealand.What happened to the bill? Well when it came back to the House for its second reading it was gutted. If we look at it there are pages and pages lines and lines where those good intentions have been destroyed where they have been wiped out. The bill has been replaced with amendments from the Government that basically will not make much difference whatsoever to gambling-related harm.We changed our vote at the second reading because the Salvation Army and the Problem Gambling Foundation amongst other organisations agreed that the bill would cause more harm than good and that the original intentions had been so warped that it would not be possible for any good to come from this bill. That is a very sad state of affairs for any member to face with their first bill’s passage through the House.However there are clauses one in particular in this bill that will do more damage. That clause is the amendment that the Government has put forward that pokies can be transferred and relocated from one venue to another if councils decide to put that in their gambling policy. I asked specifically about this clause at the Commerce Committee because it came out of nowhere. There were no submissions on this clause. There was no other discussion about this clause. It just suddenly appeared. My question was: if a council already has a relocation policy that means that it will be able to reduce the number of pokies in total when a transferral account occurs will it be able to do that under this clause in this bill? The answer to my question was no they would not.I acknowledge Supplementary Order Paper 290 from Carol Beaumont which actually addresses this issue. I thank her for putting that up because it means that councils will be able to reduce the number of pokies if there is a relocation if they decide that that is what they want in their gambling policy. I know that some councils have actually had that policy in the past because together with Mr Goldsmith from the National Party I was on the gambling policy hearings of the old Auckland City Council when that policy was put into place. I will also actually pay tribute to Mr Mallard and his Supplementary Order Paper 291 which insists that there be a reduction if there is to be a relocation in pokies from one venue to another. He suggested that it should be 25 percent and frankly I agree with him.Hon Trevor Mallard: At least.DENISE ROCHE: At least 25 percent. Thank you. I absolutely agree with that and I think any reasonable person who was attempting to reduce gambling harm would also agree with that.The thing though is will this actually happen? Will pokies move from one high-deprivation area to a low-deprivation area? The justification for it in the select committee was that this would be an incentive. If they did not lose the pokies they would automatically do it. But actually if you look at why pokies are prevalent in high-deprivation areas you have to ask whether it is actually going to happen at all because it is those high-deprivation areas—those areas Mr Flavell where there are a lot ofMāori people living where there are a lot ofMāori people getting hooked on pokies in pubs—that make the money for the pokie industry. I remind this Committee that the figures show that 40 percent of the proceeds from pokie gambling that are distributed to communities comes from people who have no control over their gambling behaviour. I am deeply saddened that the intention of this bill which was to address the fact that people in high-deprivation areas particularlyMāori and Pasifika people will do nothing—nothing—to assist those people and they will still be targeted by the industry. In fact it could well make it worse.There are over 18000 pokies in pubs and clubs in New Zealand. There is around $856 million generated from pokie gambling for distribution and that was the amount in 2011-12 and I think it was fairly similar this year as well. That is an awful lot of money and it is an awful lot of money when you consider that 40 percent of that came from people who could not afford it.We will be supporting many of the Supplementary Order Papers that have been put forward today. In particular we will be supporting the Supplementary Order Papers that are a first attempt or another attempt—basically because this bill has not been successful—to try to bring some transparency to the pokie trusts. The clauses in this billthat were designed to ensure that pokie trusts did not rort the system that the distribution occurred elsewhere have failed and I think we have to recognise that. But Mr Mallard’s Supplementary Order Papers would actually ensure that there is transparency around how pokie trusts spend the money that they get which is a goodly percentage. The restriction that Mr Mallard has suggested in another one of his Supplementary Order Papers which would put a restriction of $100000 as a limit on what trustees of those pokie trusts can earn is a great idea and another step forward to some transparency.There are other—