Hudson Brett: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHudson Brett: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7315. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to rise in support of this Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3). It was a challenging bill to work on—I sit on the Government Administration Committee. It is actually a three-way balance because we have the reality that many Kiwis enjoy gambling and do not suffer any harm from it. There is about $700 million a year expended on class 4 machines but then again there is a small group of people who have gambling problems and who clearly do experience harm as a result of their problems with gambling. But the third arm if you will in this balance is in actual fact the good that is returned to the community through class 4 gambling. The amount in 2013 was $246 million returned to local communities for sports and community groups—so for public good within those communities.As a committee we had to balance the idea that there is the entertainment aspect there is the community good and there is the potential for real harm. The data shows us which again is a challenge in itself that the percentage of people with genuine problem gambling is about 0.7 of 1 percent. So as a percentage it is not a large group of people but the reality for that group of people is that the problem is extraordinarily serious and quite wide ranging in its impact not only on them but on their families. The committee worked together to work out how we could bring a bill back to the House that would deliver the things we want it to deliver particularly around increasing transparency of grant making—sunlight is the best disinfectant—so that we can avoid rorting and distortions. But actually within that another great part of that is that there are elements in the bill that will ensure that the maximum amount of funds possible will be returned to the local community where the gambling took place. I think that is a fantastic change.Along with that we are making sure that we are reducing potential conflict of interest situations with the societies the venues and the grant recipients improving transparency around management companies—that was an area where it was felt that not to put too fine a point on it some cost rorting could have been undertaken—and also simplifying compliance and reducing costs.Here is what I wish to just talk about—this commission payment thing. The Minister has pointed out that this is an area that we want the Department of Internal Affairs to give advice on. But the evidence is that the rates of problem gambling are similar in Australia to what they are here and yet Australia does permit large amounts of profit actually to be made from this sort of gambling. And there are similar rates in places like Britain Canada and Sweden. Similarly Lotto is a commission payment - based system and there were no reports through our process that that commission-based system was creating any perverse incentives or bad incentives for Lotto operators to seek to extract more money out of gamblers.Also because I encouraged them to take an evidence-based approach to their thinking Professor Bill Abbott pro vice-chancellor and dean at the Auckland University of Technology who in his submission said he did not favour a commission-based system did acknowledge that there is no evidence that provides any causal sort of proof or evidence that a commission system will result in negative incentives. So I do encourage the department to take that into its thinking. But in the end what I would say is that I think we have returned a very good bill a very sensible set of changes to the House and I commend this bill to the House.