Roche Denise: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6457. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): It is my pleasure to take this first call for the Greens on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3). Like the previous speaker Ruth Dyson I also did have to go back and review what had happened at the Government Administration Committee and in the second reading because it has been quite a long period of time since we were here in the Chamber debating these issues and a long period of time actually since we heard the submissions during the select committee deliberations.I am not usually a member of the Government Administration Committee but I stepped in because I am the gambling spokesperson for the Greens. I want to acknowledge the chair and the other members of the Government Administration Committee for the excellent way that we examined all the evidence before us and made our report. Unfortunately I do not agree with a lot of things that are still in the bill and it is for this reason that I have put forward Supplementary Order Paper 120 which actually covers several issues.We spend an enormous amount of money on gambling in this country. There are 1300 class 4 gambling venues across the country and it is acknowledged that these need to be regulated. I am pleased to see that the Minister in charge of that regulation Peter Dunne is in the chair because I do have some questions for him. The area where gambling venues need to be regulated is around where there is the potential for the funds that are generated from gambling—around how those funds are gathered where those funds come from and where those funds go to.There are parts of this bill particularly in the first part that we agree with. Things like transparency and dealing with conflicts of interest are very sensible and reasonable adjustments to the legislation. But where we do not agree is around the issue of the controls and mechanisms that should be in place in the regulation to control problem gambling and to control the ease of access to the gambling machines if there is a problem in the community. It is also about the fact that we have to acknowledge that class 4 gambling—electronic gambling machines—does create problem gamblers.There is international evidence that actually supports the fact that the machines themselves are designed to ensure that there is a percentage of gamblers who gamble regularly and that they will become problem gamblers. It is here that I believe our regulation should be focused. It should be focused on minimising harm and I think it is the duty of a responsible Government to ensure that our laws are in place to protect our citizens. That is surely what we all want across the Committee and I am sure that I would get cross-party support on that statement. It is how we go about it—fundamentally we disagree with some of the provisions in this bill in Part 1 that will liberalise access to gambling and subsequently will incentivise venue owners particularly to not control problem gambling or monitor it in the way that they are required to under the Gambling Act.Since 2003 I think it is when the first Gambling Actwas modernised there has been a strong opposition to having commission-based payments for venue operators. This I am sure will be outlined time and time again tonight. The reason—and it is the reason that we have heard put forward time and again by submitters—to not have commission-based payments to venue owners is simply that it does incentivise the venue operator to not do the correct host responsibility and to promote problem gambling.We have a situation where 40 percent of the funds that are generated for community purposes from class 4 gambling—40 percent of those funds—come from people who have gambling problems. They have limited control over their gambling behaviour. We also know that where those 1300 venues are placed they target poorer communities. Essentially they sell hopes and dreams in a very cynical way that lures people in in the mistaken belief that they will be able to get rich get out of their financial problems and basically make a life. They are false dreams. They are definitely false dreams because it is a cynical ploy by the industry to ensure that they entrap people with limited control over their gambling. It creates that sort of gambling behaviour.So we have got a few Supplementary Order Papers to Part 1—well they cover a few things. One is around removing the ability for venues to be paid on a commission basis. The other area is around removing what I think the officials have described as an incentive to venue holders with licences to extend those licences for 3 years. The reason we oppose that is that we have seen that there is very limited good behaviour in the pokie sector—not much at all. The sting which other people have referred to by the Department of Labour where its compliance team in December last year visited pokie gambling venues across the country and only one complied with good host responsibility behaviour—that seems to imply that there are very few venues that are currently operating in a way that actually says they should be rewarded for good behaviour. What I would like to see is more compliance and evidence of compliance well before we regulate to offer a 3-year licence with few controls or regulations or even oversight.The other area is around harm minimisation which is completely missing and this was one of the issues that came up time and time again in the submissions that were put forward. Some of them were really heart-breaking. What we would like to do in order for us to support the bill would be to amend the bill to ensure that there are effective harm minimisation practices in the regulations which would then have to happen in class 4 venues across the country.The sorts of harm minimisation suggestions that I have in my Supplementary Order Paper are around things like player tracking—real-time player tracking—and pre-commitment cards. This hands control over to the gambler. With a pre-commitment card they can determine before they start gambling how much they are going to spend how much time they are going to spend and then once their card has expired they are finished. This in effect limits—it is a very effective limit—the amount of gambling. Someone who wants to have a flutter can basically just go ahead and have a flutter and it will not be a problem. But for those who are starting to emerge with problem gambling behaviours it is a way for them to regulate or self-monitor their own gambling behaviour.We have also suggested that there be player tracking and this is something that we could be doing as the technology improves. I think there was some discussion—and there has been in previous bills as well—around facial technology. If you use facial technology you can actually ban people from playing on the machines and losing money. I guess we could be going down that track but actually we need to be looking at prevention before the problem happens rather than at restrictions on gamblers who already have the problem gambling behaviours in place.I was pleased to be part of the select committee to hear the submissions that we heard on that. There was some very very good and compelling evidence from places like the Auckland Council for example which although it supported the bill in many aspects—certainly around distribution of funds and increasing that to 40 percent from where it has been at 37 point something percent the issues around conflict of interests and the issues around greater transparency—