Roche Denise: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1853. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a call on this bill the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). While I was looking at this bill in preparation for today’s speech I decided to go back to look at why it was first introduced. If we recall this bill was introduced in August 2007. Essentially the reason for it was to make some amendments to tighten up some technical parts of the 2003 Gambling Act which was enacted only a few years before that in 2004. This bill came to the House in August 2007. The Government Administration Committee reported back to the House in May 2008. The second reading was in May 2009 and it was introduced back to this House last year in 2014. This Parliament the 51st Parliament picked it up again in December for the Committee of the whole House and here we are in its final reading. That is a gestation of approximately 7 years. You have to ask yourself why it has taken so long. I am assuming that it is because circumstances have overtaken many parts of this bill. There have been other bills that have been introduced that have tinkered with the Gambling Act and there have also been quite a lot of different applications of the original Act which still need to be tightened up and are still about to be addressed with the next bill the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) which is currently in front of the select committee.The reason this was enacted in the first place was to tighten up some of the controls around gambling machines and regulations for casinos. I went back and looked at the Hansard speeches of the second reading in 2009. I was interested to note in Sue Bradford’s speech at that time that she said that $2 billion was gambled in that previous financial year. So in 2008-09 $2 billion was gambled and was lost from people’s pockets. Despite a reduction in pokie machines between that time and now and despite the efforts of councils and sinking-lid policies this year and the last financial year the Department of Internal Affairs reported that $2.09 billion was spent. That is $19 million more than what was spent on gambling in the previous year. In the last financial year $808 million was spent on class 4 pokie machines—that is the pubs and clubs gambling—and $509 million was spent at casinos. This is despite a gradual reduction in the number of venues the number of licence holders and the number of non-casino gambling machines that have gradually decreased. So what we are seeing is that despite those efforts by communities people are gambling more.Without a doubt we support this bill. It has mostly technical amendments. It includes the definition of a “gaming machine” and that is great because it actually starts to take into account some of the changes to gaming machines that are being introduced—specifically the multi-seat automated gaming machines that Skycity will be introducing to its casino as part of its deal for the convention centre which allows an extra 20 automated machines that will have up to 12 persons at each site. We see this bill as a lost opportunity essentially. We had Supplementary Order Papers to this bill through the Committee of the whole House to look at player tracking and pre-commit cards which would essentially make gambling on pokie machines a lot safer than it is currently. We have had attempts in other bills—specifically in the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill that went through in this House 2 years ago in the name of the Māori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell—and yet we still have not addressed problem gambling as an issue.We will be supporting this bill as it comes through; however we do want to say that there is a lot more that we could be doing to sort out some of the rorts in this industry and to keep people safe.