Mallard Trevor: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mallard Trevor: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2145. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 That objection shows the level of charity from Nick Smith. I actually happen to disagree with a number of things that the Rt Hon Winston Peters said. I have a view that it is not appropriate to subsidise the racing industry out of the pokie machines. We have differed on that in the past but I think what we can say about the member is that he has been consistent in his support of the racing industry not only from this source but in a number of different ways as well including the taxation approach to it.  
I say to the member in charge of the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill that I certainly support its referral to the Commerce Committee. I think there are a lot of discussions to be had there. I predict that there will be a lot of submissions and a lot of discussion. But the question that the member has to answer at the end of this process when he is speaking in reply is why he has left out of this the people who do the biggest pokie rip-offs in the country the people who take the most money out the people who take the money out and give it to John Banks which he does not declare. I want to know why he has excluded from this legislation the massive amount that the casinos take out of our community not only in the pokies but in the rest of it. I want to know why that member is not making people like John Banks who receive that money and do not declare it front up and be transparent.  
I would expect in a bill that is really promoting transparency about the expenditure of gaming funding that instead of a massive amount of the money going offshore as it does with the profits of Skycity it would provide for it to be spent in New Zealand in the way and with the methods that are set out in this bill—or actually in ways that could be quite a lot better which I think other people have thought about over some time. What should also happen is that when people receive money from those organisations that should be transparent as well rather than sticking it in their pocket and pretending as John Banks did that he did not know about the donation when clearly people like Len Brown were honest and straightforward and made declarations to that effect.  
There are lots of ways that we could improve this area and I agree with Winston Peters that people who are in touch with the community will know that things are a lot cleaner than they used to be. I think all of us who have been around for some time and in touch with the community know some pretty rough stories: the rugby club that used to get grants from the charity associated with one pub only. It got a massive grant and generally half of it went back under the table to the publican and there was also an obligation to buy beer at non-discounted rates from that particular pub. So although on the surface things looked like they were right—the money was being paid out; the audit trail went that way—what happened was that we did not see the kickbacks that were occurring either directly or as a result of pricing for alcohol that was not at the level that it should have been.  
A lot of that has been tidied up with some of the larger gaming trusts that have now put together more thorough audit processes. And there is I think a willingness for people to blow the whistle on that sort of arrangement when publicans who used to be the main beneficiaries do that.  
But we still have in New Zealand a lot of hotels that are more or less reliant on the pokie machines in order to survive rather than the food and liquor that they sell. They effectively use the pokies as a subsidy for keeping an institution open that could not survive otherwise. My view is that that is just as I think it is for racing an inappropriate subsidy for an organisation because it comes from the poorest. In the end I am going to listen to John Banks and see what he says about that—