Fenton Darien: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11910. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):I am happy to take a call on the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill. Labour is treating this as a personal vote a conscience vote so this is my contribution to it. I do want to say that I believe that Te Ururoa Flavell came in good faith with a bill that had some very good intentions. Certainly I think looking at the Commerce Committee process there were 4944 submissions and also 29438 form submissions. So clearly this bill had a great deal of interest. Without knowing the details I suspect that actually the majority of the submissions that were heard and were received were from organisations that are very concerned about the harm that gambling does to our communities.The sad thing about this bill is that it has been hijacked by the National Party and it does barely anything to reduce gambling harm. In fact some organisations as we have heard tonight—for example the Salvation Army and the Problem Gambling Foundation—are saying that the changes will do nothing. The changes in this bill that have been made by the select committee will do nothing for problem gamblers and those in the communities who are wishing to manage the impact of gambling.What is the size of the problem we are talking about here? In New Zealand there are 1381 gambling venues six casinos 17670 non-casino pokies 199 tables and 2826 casino pokie machines. It is that third figure that gets me really. There are 17670 non-casino pokie machines that we now have throughout New Zealand—17670 which is incredible. In poorer areas the ratio of pokies to people is 1:75 whereas in wealthier areas the ratio is 1:465. That means a young person growing up in a poorer area is going to be exposed to six times more pokie machines than a young person in a well-off community. I really believe as I said at the beginning that Te Ururoa Flavell came with very good intentions for this Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill and it is very disappointing that we have ended up with a bill that is not going to addressany of those problems that I have just been talking about. In fact as I have said some organisations are saying that it is going to make it worse.Some of the changes that have been made by the Commerce Committee effectively gut the bill. When you look at the bill you can see through the bill page after page of ruled-out clauses—page after page. It just goes on and on and on. The National members on the select committee have marched in and have completely redacted this bill actually. It bears no resemblance to its former self.The bill leaves gaming trusts in control of the distribution of funds and will not require gaming trusts to return 80 percent of the funds to the district where the gambling occurred. We will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to rectify this issue. A few years ago the Manukau City Council conducted an investigation into how much money was being spent from pokie machines in that area in that poor area and how much was actually coming back to the community. It turns out that it was $90 million in deficit. It was actually costing that community $90 million to have all those pokie machines. This bill does not do anything about that. It does not do anything about helping councils to reduce and eliminate pokies in some areas because it allows operators to simply move elsewhere while retaining the same number of pokie machines. The Problem Gambling Foundation chief executive said the amendments to the bill mean it is effectively now misnamed because it will have little if any effect on problem gambling. It is a great pity. It is a great missed opportunity.