Dowie Sarah: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1801. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill):I appreciate the opportunity as the deputy chair of the Government Administration Committee to talk to the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). Echoing the sentiment of the Hon Peter Dunne—this is a momentous occasion.Before I decided to get into this game I was probably like you Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard a political tragic who would spend many hours watching Parliament TV. When you are watching Parliament TV and some of these technical bills come up that make minor wording changes I guess there is a bit of risk that you think they are not momentous and they do not matter. If I have learnt anything in my short time here in the House it is that this is definitely an important bill. It goes to making changes to the parent Act the Gambling Act 2003 to make it work better and more important to make the framework work better so that we can enforce it in a better way. In my address tonight I am obviously going to highlight what the greater intent of the bill is move into a few of the clauses that I think add value and then talk about a few examples that I think are relevant to the way things are working well which we can perhaps use as a model going forward.As I said before this bill makes changes to the Gambling Act 2003. That Act was a step change in the way we look at gambling. It is acknowledging that gambling—as well as other activities out there such as having alcohol or simply getting into a car—can present some danger. There are people who undertake these activities and they are unaffected. But in the same breath there are people who suffer dreadfully from those activities. They become addicted and it is devastating for them and their families. This Government is definitely supportive of minimising harm. We support this bill going through with the main thrust of it being that the funds generated from class 4 gambling which is pokies and non-casino venues are filtered back into the community—into the communities where that money can be lost and into communities of need.The progress of this bill has been 7 years in length. Of course I did not sit on the original Government Administration Committee that heard the submissions but I have been privileged as a member of the current committee to hear submitters submitting on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) and I would like to take the time to thank those submitters because they certainly have educated me as to the risks of gambling and some of the issues we have in our system. I want to say again that even though this is a technical bill we have taken our role seriously and I am looking forward to seeing it passed and to the industry being tidied up.As has been alluded to by the member opposite Adrian Rurawhe it is no secret that the Department of Internal Affairs has undertaken some monitoring and some mystery shopping exercises and that it has undertaken some prosecutions. There are some class 4 operators out there whose behaviour has been disappointing to say the least. Again this bill cleans it up. We want to make things more transparent we want to prevent rorting and we want to make sure that the funds generated from profits are shifted back into the community. But we also want to put the onus on organisations to account back to that community as to how the money is spent.I am going to talk about two ways in which that is done in this bill. The first is very practical—I had no idea that it was actually going on but the Hon Peter Dunne mentioned it—in that there is an obligation in the bill for venues to bank gaming machine profits directly into the society’s bank account. I had no idea that normal accounting processes were not being adhered to. This practical prohibition is going to mean that there will be an obligation for societies to deal with the funds appropriately and not filter them off for unsecured and unauthorised loans so to speak.The other thing in the bill that I like is that when the grant is made those societies actually apply the money to the purpose for which it was allocated. Again you would have thought that this was happening as a matter of course but apparently it is not. So these are technical and minor changes but in the grand scheme they will make a big difference to the gambling sector.In respect of harm minimisation again there are some practical changes that the bill makes. There is the prohibiting of eftpos machines being in the proximity of pokies meaning that if those playing need further funds they have to get up from the pokie machines walk away and have some time out to think. The other change is to put an obligation on venues to advertise about problem gambling and to provide a duty on venues to assist those whom they identify as problem gamblers to give them help to give them advice and support them to get further qualified help and advice. I am definitely supportive of this. I think that these sorts of changes will assist the industry and will hopefully have a beneficial effect on problem gambling.As the member opposite Adrian Rurawhe has alluded to I have been busy as the member for Invercargill educating people about fantastic Southland. We all know that you Mr Assistant Speaker are an honorary Southlander as you have attended many Southland parties over the years. One thing that we do well is that we have a trust called the Invercargill Licensing Trust with an associated foundation. It is a very very popular trust and I believe it is popular because it is accountable to the public and it is—Dr David Clark: They build good velodromes.SARAH DOWIE: It does build very good velodromes. In fact one of the projects that it has supported is of course the ILT Stadium which it has put quite significant funds into. It is a fantastic venue. I do not want to go on too much about Invercargill—the weather is good at times—but the Southland stadium is needed. It is needed for the community. Those trustees are integrated into the community they are well in touch and they are elected people. They have skills second to none across the board and they can look at projects with a good eye and know where to put the funds for the best benefit of the community.I just want to take the time—it is not just about venues; there is another programme that I really like and that is the Invercargill Licensing Trust schools swimming programme. During 2013 there were 37161 entries for school swimming lessons funded by the Invercargill Licensing Trust and that learn to swim programme is recognised nationwide. So as you can see when a trust is doing something well it is putting those profits from pokies into community projects that make a difference where it is needed and it is extremely commendable.Just finishing with a few statistics about Southland in actual fact the number of pokie machines is sinking and despite the funds decreasing from pokie machines and pokies sinking in number the trust is still making a profit. As part of that it is investing in pilot schemes.