Bradford Sue: Responsible Gambling Bill — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Responsible Gambling Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7863] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 When the Responsible Gambling Bill first appeared on the scene in October 2001 the Green Party was full of hope and enthusiasm about the progressive reforms we believed the Labour-Alliance coalition Government was introducing. Disturbed by the ever-growing numbers of non-casino gaming machines and rocketing rates of problem gambling we looked at things like the moratorium on new casinos and tighter regulation of pokies and pledged our goodwill and support for this bill. 
However we then entered the select committee process. I sat on the Government Administration Committee for the duration of its consideration of the bill and what an extensive and revealing experience that was. Although my background of working in the unemployed and beneficiaries movement had given me plenty of real life acquaintance with some of the problems associated with gambling especially among low-income people I had never before been so fully exposed to the realities of all sides of the gambling industry in Aotearoa - New Zealand. I think what shocked me above all else was one particular day that we spent listening to submissions in south Auckland. On the one hand we heard people from the pub charities telling us how wonderful and good for the country their work is and on the other people from problem gambling services showed us maps that pinpoint precisely how the proprietors of pokie machines absolutely and deliberately establish them in the poorest parts of our cities towns and suburbs. 
Many pokie parlours are deliberately situated and geared to attract mothers who have just walked their children to school and beneficiaries with time on their hands and too little cash in their pockets. These places are established with the express purpose of extracting what little cash is left whether a person is on $150 a week or $1000 a week. The damage that is being caused to individuals families workplaces and communities is a national disgrace. It has been made worse by the fact that we have had Governments that have deliberately allowed this situation to develop. We do not suddenly have over 27000 pokie machines in New Zealand just by chance. 
When the current Government took office at the end of 1999 and was advised of the major social and economic problems caused particularly by the pernicious nature of pokie-machine gambling there were around 16000 machines in place. As at April 2003 there were 27340 an increase of around 11000. There is now a ratio of one pokie machine to 146 men women and children in our country. We think of America as the home of the casino and the slot machine but even America has a ratio of 1:400 a figure that only one district in New Zealand Waitakere City can proudly beat. Even the previously untarnished Chatham Islands now has pokie machines—the mind boggles—and provincial areas like Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty continue to see significant increases. The prize for the highest ratio of machines to head of population goes surprisingly to the Kaikoura district at one pokie machine for every 61 residents with Queenstown and Thames-Coromandel chasing close behind. 
What does all this mean one might ask and why are pokies such an issue? Statistics from last year show a 24 percent increase in the number of people seeking help with gambling addictions directly caused by gaming machines. Over 80 percent of new clients looking for assistance from problem gambling services last year attributed their problem to the pokies. Worryingly enough though these figures are inside them lies another distressing trend; the fact that there has been a massive increase in the number of women seeking help for gambling addiction. In 1997 only 28.6 percent of problem gamblers receiving counselling were women. By 2002 they made up nearly 50 percent. The proportionately greater impact on children and families can easily be imagined even by those who are not directly engaged in our ever-burgeoning problem gambling industry. The fact that this is happening at a time when the number of machines has risen by 11000 leads any sane person to one conclusion only; that the proliferation of gaming machines in New Zealand has had a direct effect on the numbers of people afflicted by gambling addiction and all the subsequent social economic physical and psychological damage it causes. 
I know the Government will be quick to respond by saying that this so-called Responsible Gambling Bill is a fine and totally adequate answer to the problem. As I said earlier at first the Green Party too thought that this bill provided most of the answers and that perhaps a few amendments during the select committee process would fix up the rough edges. However this was not to be. As time went on it became increasingly clear that this bill marketed as the solution to the social ills created by the proliferation of pokie machines and casinos simply did not go far enough. By the end of 2002 the Green Party decided to withdraw its support for the bill. Since that time we have been working closely with a number of church organisations and community groups and with Local Government New Zealand in a bid first of all to ensure that all pokie machines and sites not just those licensed after 17 October 2001 are covered by the bill in terms of local body control. 
We believe that local councils and local people should be able to have the ultimate say over whether and where pokie parlours are established and maintained in their district and how many machines there should be in their district if any. The Green Party contends that it is simply not good enough to allow local councils and through them local people only some say over how many pokies there are in their neighbourhood and where they are placed. The bill makes progress in terms of requiring territorial local authorities to adopt a policy on gaming venues like casinos and pokie parlours but they will have control only over the approximately 5000 machines whose venues were licensed after October 2001. The up to 20000 machines at venues licensed before that date will not be subject to councils’ new gambling venue policies. We are calling on a Labour Government which supposedly supports principles of greater local control over local issues to consider revising its ambivalent position by the time this bill comes back to the House for its Committee stage. 
The second area where we are calling for a change of heart from Government is in relation to the distribution system for the proceeds of non-casino gaming machines. A report just out from the Lotteries Commission shows that Lotto sales are continuing to fall as a result of pressure from other forms of gambling. The drop in profits means that the payout to the worthy organisations that the Lotteries Commission supports will also continue to fall. The commission’s statement of corporate intent tabled in Parliament just last week estimates that its net profit for 2002-03 will be around $106 million. Last year the profit was $113 million. Only $103 million will be handed out to community groups this year. That is a big drop from the $140 million that the commission was able to make available to a myriad of worthy groups in 1999. 
Over the last two decades Governments have put higher and higher expectations on the community sector to carry out functions formerly provided by the State. Contracts are rarely enough to fully fund activities and hard-pressed organisations often rely on Lotteries Commission funding to help with even the requirements of bare survival. Meanwhile the pub charities that distribute the proceeds of non-casino gaming machines around the country are now doling out around $200 million a year and that amount is rising. 
A major research project carried out earlier this year looking at where the funds from commercial pokie bars are distributed showed that very few of these profits are reaching the community organisations working in communities whose needs are greatest. The study reported that sports groups predominantly traditional male sports got over 50 percent of the funding while all other types of organisations including arts and culture and all the different kinds of community activities got the rest between them. We would like to see all or even part of this $200 million-plus a year taken out of private hands and allocated by a mix of national regional and local distribution committees. We are not advocating as some have claimed some kind of totally centralised bureaucratic distribution system. Rather we would like to see equity between national and local allocation and fairness between types of activities funded. The Green Party is not against sports and recreation either. What we do seek is equity between these different types of activities. 
 We want a process that is fully and publicly accountable where applicants have a fair chance of being considered and where the choice of who gets funded is not dependent on the arbitrary whims of the administrators of pub charities who obviously will always give preference to the type of organisation with which they feel a natural empathy and all too often to those who come to drink in their bar. 
I make a last heartfelt plea to Labour MPs to consider changing their minds on this bill. Labour still prides itself at least sometimes on its support for low-income workers beneficiaries their families and the organisations that serve them. I just cannot fathom how Labour’s social justice principles can be lined up with its continuing heartless backing of the privatised distribution system of this enormous amount of money and its failure to give local government the power to control pokie numbers and venues in their own districts. I hope that Labour MPs will look at this bill again before it comes back to the House and consider amending it so that it goes beyond being a half-hearted attempt at responsibility.