Mitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1504. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First):It gives me great pleasure to stand up in front of the Committee after a fabulous scheduled meal break to talk about the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). It is not the first time we have spoken about a gambling amendment bill. It is the first time that I have had a chance to talk about the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). The last time was actually the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) and it created quite a stir in the House to the point where before I came in this evening I had to check to make sure we had a defibrillator on hand to make sure that there was not going to be anybody passing out through the pressures of this afternoon’s conversation.I would like to start off by going to Part 3 of the bill and talking about that specifically and that is clearly harm minimisation. When I talk about harm minimisation—and it is a word that gets used readily—I do not think the essence of where we are actually sitting in this country is being put into consideration. In actual fact we are sitting in a harm minimisation period when it comes to gaming machines—specifically class 4 gaming machines and the likes of pokie machines. I think if this Government was truly trying to represent the people by saying “Let’s do some good about minimising harm to those people who have got problems with gambling.” it would not be doing deals with the likes of Skycity Casino which we have heard—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The member will resume his seat. The debate around this bill is very narrow. Members will confine themselves to the narrow nature of the clauses that we are debating. Other members of the House have done exactly the same and this is not a place for—[Interruption] I am sorry; I am on my feet. And so I remind the member that he is to stick to the narrow nature of the clauses of this bill.Denise Roche: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I just would like to draw to your attention that Part 3 in the bill does actually refer to casinos and talks about age restriction on gambling in casinos and presumably also about issues relating to problem gambling with casinos as well.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Thank you. I have the gist of the member’s point of order. My ruling remains exactly the same. The fact that casinos are mentioned and pokies are mentioned is implicit in what this legislation is trying to achieve. Members will remain narrowly focused on the clauses that are under debate.CLAYTON MITCHELL: Mr Chair I appreciate your response and I was actually hoping to get through today’s conversation without having a point of order and being sat down. I certainly will not make a habit of it. It was not intentional.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Have another go.CLAYTON MITCHELL: I do have to go back to harm minimisation though because it is a big focus of what I am here to talk about today. If I look at yesterday’s release of the Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit’s state of the nation report which came out in fact this morning it was saying that pokie machine numbers have sunk to a 14-year low. It also goes on to say that the decline in gaming machine numbers has translated into the decline in losses by gamblers. This represents to me that we are in a positive decline when it comes to harm minimisation for gambling. And I get back to something simple that we learnt: if you do not want to fix something that is not broken do not fix it. It does not need to be fixed. We do not need this piece of legislation in here to tighten up on an industry that is currently under siege. When we talk about harm minimisation we do not factor in the good that we get out of our communities the money that gets represented for our Government—some near $300 million in taxes $300 million that goes into our local communities.I am telling you that when I look around here at the members who are looking up at me who are members of tennis clubs sports clubs cultural clubs schools and surf lifesaving communities they rely heavily on the money and the good that class 4 gambling does associate itself with. When I go back to the casinos and the likes where they have been given 500 more machines if that was truly about harm minimisation they would not be allowing that to go ahead. It is actually about making money for an organisation that is much larger than the small pubs and clubs and associated groups that actually do have gaming within their societies to actually put back directly into their communities. For example last year Skycity Casino returned $3 million—yes I am coming back Mr Chair—to its local community as opposed to the $300 million that these class 4 gaming machines throughout the country bring in.You know over the years we have seen Player Information Displays and pods; we have reduced gaming machine spending from $100 notes and $50 notes down to $20 notes which has obviously helped control the gambling and the way people are actually spending their money; we have now got timeouts; and we have got staff intervention where we have taken away the responsibility of the person who is actually gambling and making that choice to put some money in whether it be for relaxation or whether it be for just enjoyment. We have taken that responsibility away and we have put it in the hands of operators staff and managers. And this new legislation goes a long way from giving that responsibility to the people who are making that choice to put that money into that machine and making it the responsibility of those owners and their operators.I think this legislation in part we do not support. There are parts however that we do support and I will talk about those parts shortly. We need to get back to the part about self-exclusion orders. That is absolutely vital for our people to be able to say to themselves: “I’ve got a problem. I need help and in order to get that help I need to stay away from licensed gambling machine areas.” It is an absolutely fantastic piece of legislation. This new piece of legislation is going to allow those people to come on to licensed premises providing they do not go into those gaming machine areas. What a load of nonsense! We must absolutely uphold their right to stay away from gambling areas and say to them: “No you can’t enter that licensed premises.” Otherwise you have got extra costs that will be applied to those small businesses and those pubs and clubs around the country to have security not only at their front door to make sure that there are no intoxicated persons entering the premises and to make sure there are no under-agers entering the premises but also to make sure that those people who have self-excluded themselves do not secretly sneak themselves in or lead themselves to temptation to go back into those rooms.The Problem Gambling Foundation has actually put a lot of money in through gambling levies to actually minimise harm to take away some of that risk and yet when I look at some of these figures that are put forward here the help is not there. The money that is put in is actually not getting to the people who need it the most. In actual fact—and here is an article from a Queenstown observer—“Counsellors say a lack of services for problem gamblers and people who need addiction-related help in Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago is ‘outrageous’.” They just do not have the on-hand support. In fact what I am saying here is that the money that is being gathered by the gambling levy for harm minimisation is actually being misspent. That money is actually being spent lobbying against—heavily lobbying against—the organisations that are actually funding them when in actual fact they should not be standing up placarding the gaming machines.They should actually be saying that the 0.03 percent of the population who have a gambling problem—and we are talking about gambling problems to do with Lotto and the Daily Keno we are talking about casinos we are talking about the TAB and we are talking about some of the parts of this country where betting is going up on a steady incline. We are not talking about gambling with class 4 machines which are actually on a decline. In actual fact if the foundation spent that money in the right place we would find that we would get that number right down instead of spending it on lobbying against the groups that are there to support it.I would like to stand up and speak now again on Part 1 of the bill. This is the part that we do support. Racing in New Zealand has been a huge part of our society for a very very long time. We cast our minds way back long before we were born to one of our greatest exports this country has ever had and that is Phar Lap. This was a young horse—a thoroughbred—that was sold off to Australia. It created a worldwide storm. In fact at one point it was the third-largest grossing horse in the world—up there against some of the other greats. They do not come to mind at the moment. I think Man o’ War was one of them. By not allowing class 4 gaming machine proceeds to go into one of our greatest export regions for our country—and let us talk about that for just a second. We are talking about an export group where last year in 2012-13 there were 1500 overseas sales of our thoroughbred racing horses totalling some $130 million in export sales for our country. That comes purely from racing.Racing is under siege. We need to take a positive proactive approach. We need to be putting in funds like what they done with the Melbourne Cup and made it the richest race in the southern hemisphere. We could actually have that at our fingertips. We could actually have the largest race in New Zealand if we were able to put moneys into funding that. That outstrips a conference centre. I mean this is going to bring in huge amounts of wealth throughout our country and to cut the hand that has been feeding this country for such a long time is an inappropriate position for the Government and this bill to take.I want to say just to finish off that one of the positive things we have seen the gambling class 4 gaming machines do is—I have just got a CD that I believe every single MP got late last year. Just to cast your eyes—this is 13 to 18-year-olds and this was a national competition that was funded by class 4 gaming machines. This is the 2014 Lion Foundation songwriting competition. This is talking about 13 to 18-year-old children who are in our schools who have been empowered to stand up write songs and sing their songs. I would like to actually take this time to congratulate Talia Dalton from Ōtūmoetai College in Tauranga for getting that award. That is very important when it comes to the opposition to harm minimisation. This is talking about the good that gambling does. Thank you.