Roche Denise: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13266. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker.Tēnā koutou ki te Whare. Gamble-free Day was on Sunday just past. It is an opportunity to raise awareness about problem gambling and the harm that gambling can do to families and communities. Under ordinary other circumstances it would have fitted well with the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill. But those circumstances have changed because this bill has changed. It is no longer focused on gambling harm reduction.Let us review what this bill set out to achieve. It was to give councils and communities the power to cut the number of pokies in their area or eliminate them altogether. It was to ensure that at least 80 percent of the 37.12 percent of the funds that are currently distributed as grants from gambling machine losses be returned to the communities where the gambling took place. It was to phase out the pokie trusts which distribute the gambling money from pokies and replace them with more accountable committees that have been through a territorial authority or another mechanism. It was to remove horse racing from the list of charitable purposes that can use the gambling funds and it was to introduce player tracking and pre-commitment cards enabling gamblers to put controls on the amount of time they spend and money they lose while playing pokies.Has this bill before the House done any of those things? I have to say the answer is no. It has not given communities and councils more power to reduce the number of pokies in their communities. In fact this bill has made it harder for them to do so by introducing an amendment to the original legislation that will allow the transfer of pokies to other venues without losing any of their machines. This cuts across councils’ ability to use transferral as a way to implement sinking-lid policies and reduce the number of pokies in their communities overall. It makes a mockery of the sinking-lid policies that so many councils have introduced so far and I note that according to the Department of Internal Affairs in the last year councils have been doing a really good job. The number of venues and pokies has declined. The number of gaming machines for example decreased from 17943 to 17534.The second aim of the bill was to ensure that 80 percent of the distributable funds went back to the communities where they came from. But even a casual look at the spread of pokies across this country will show that of the current 17534 pokie machines in pubs and clubs most of them are concentrated in poor areas. The latest gambling figures also show that at the end of June this year $826.3 million was lost on those pokies. The distributable funds from this—37 percent—is around $275 million or so and 80 percent of that money could have gone back toŌtāhuhu Manurewa and Kawerau. But this bill will not allow that to happen. The reason given was that national organisations would be disadvantaged because they would not be able to apply for funds. But heavens there would still be 20 percent of that $275 million or so which is around $55 million. That is a hell of a big pool that national organisations could still apply to. We have to remember that not only does this money come from poor communities but 40 percent of this money comes from gamblers who have no control over their gambling behaviour.We should look more closely at who is getting that money. The numerous rorts every year associated with dodgy grants being allocated carry on. The latest one this year was the prosecution of a couple of people involved with the Manurewa High School RugbyAcademy and Counties Manukau Youth Development Trust. They basically gave themselves grants that were supposed to be going to local rugby. Actually it is interesting to count up how much pokie money has gone to rugby. For a non-professional sport rugby soaks up an enormous amount of cash. In March last year theOtago Daily Times revealed that between 2006 and 2011 the Otago Rugby Football Union received $5.8 million. That did not come from Otago. I have done some calculations of how much sport overall benefits from pokie money and this is what I have discovered.Over the last 7 years there have been 143000 netball players and netball in New Zealand has received nearly $44 million during that period. That works out to $307.60 per player. Let us compare that with rugby for the same time period which had 141000 players—2000 fewer than netball. Over that period their grants came to $178602000. That works out to $1260 per rugby player. I cannot figure out what that money was spent on and I can only assume that the New Zealand Rugby Union likes to allocate each player a pair of gold-plated rugby boots. For all that money that was allocated to rugby my local rugby club still holds sausage sizzles and goes for local sponsorship because it is not seeing 1260 bucks per player or gold-plated rugby boots and we have got 18 pokies in our neighbourhood. It is interesting to see that gender gap too still playing out with pokies.I guess the concentration of funds also highlights one of the other failed aspects of this bill and that was the aim of replacing the existing pokie trusts that distribute the money with something that would be more accountable to communities and it is not going to happen basically because we experienced an all-out campaign from the pokie trusts to ensure their survival. As soon as the bill passed its first reading we had the two big pokie trusts—the Lion Foundation and Pub Charity—use the community money which supports their existence to encourage their grant recipients to oppose the bill. It was implied to community organisations that with the demise of the existing pokie trusts they were probably not going to get any money.Pokie trusts have only one purpose and that is to distribute the pokie money for community good. That they should take it upon themselves to meddle with the democratic processes of the country by attempting to skew the results of the bill when that is completely outside their purpose is reprehensible. Pub Charity especially has had a good go at using its financial power to stifle dissent.This bill has failed to address the dodgy distribution of grants and I have to say that after 30000 submissions the pokie trusts have won. This bill also fails to remove horse racing from the list of purposes that can use the money generated from pokie gambling. That means that racehorse owners can still receive stake money from pokie gambling like some of the other worthy charities that receive money from pokie gambling. It is an anomaly but it remains.Finally this bill has failed in harm minimisation. This bill will not introduce pre-commitment cards or real-time player tracking. These are the only measures that can identify and control gambling behaviour before the gamblers lose everything they have got. The Minister of Internal Affairs has talked about regulation and putting some of these measures into the regulations as an alternative to having them in the bill. Regulation means that it is at the whim of the Minister. I guess he is suggesting we can trust him. But it is also through consultation with the industry. We have already lost that battle. We have lost that battle Mr Flavell. The industry won. This industry is insatiable.The last thing I want to say about this bill—and I agree with the Problem Gambling Foundation and the Salvation Army which say that this bill will make matters worse—is that it does not do what Mr Flavell really really wanted it to do when he spoke in theHouse at its introduction last year and that is address the terrible statistics that show that Māori are most harmed by these machines or as he said that they were colonised by these machines and this industry. I maintain that the member should have pulled this bill. It is a sad end to a hopeful start.Te Ururoa Flavell: OK you do something next time.DENISE ROCHE: I will.