King Annette: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1856. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I stand to support the third reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). We support this bill because it was first introduced by Labour in 2007. I just listened to the speech from the member who has resumed his seat Mark Mitchell—a good member. He said the bill was very important. Member it has been very important for a very long time—since 2007. So I am glad that the Government has finally caught up with how important it is and has decided to move it along the agenda of this House. It was first introduced by the Hon Rick Barker. If he is listening today he will be delighted to know that a bill that was once in his name is finally being passed today.There is quite a number of bills like this on the Order Paper. I am looking forward to what we do with the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill which is in my name has been there since about 2007 as well and keeps being put back on the Order Paper with little or no action. Or what about the Public Health Bill? That goes right back into the early 2000s and we are still waiting for some action on that. So we are pleased that we are getting to the end of the process of this bill.I have to say just in brief and in passing that there is an irony that we are debating a gambling bill at the same time that we are talking about more gambling in the Skycity Casino. As you know the deal was for a convention centre—yes I know but this is about gambling and gambling is around pokie machines the most evil sort of gambling you can have. I see a member over there nodding and agreeing with me. He knows that it is true. So there is an irony or a syllogism—a word like that—that we are debating this Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) at the same time that there is discussion about putting money into more gambling through a deal done on the convention centre.We passed some very important major reforms to gambling back in 2003. I noticed that some of the members in the discussion on this bill talked about how they had put a lid on pokie machines casinos and so on. I need to remind them that actually it was not the National Government that did that at all. That in fact was done by the previous Labour Government.Brett Hudson: Well they didn’t pass this bill.Hon ANNETTE KING: We did bring in those major reforms Mr Hudson. We brought them in by putting a moratorium on casinos.We do not want a casino in Wellington. For anybody out there thinking we should have a casino in Wellington there are those of us who will fight it tooth and nail. We want to be the cultural capital of New Zealand the cafe capital the coffee capital—certainly not the casino capital. We will leave that to the Aucklanders. They can have their casino; we will have all the other good things in life.We brought in a moratorium on casinos we brought in a reduction in the number of class 4 gambling machines and new venues and we had a significant shift in the focus towards minimisation of gambling-associated harm. As a former Minister of Health and as a person who has an interest in the harm of gambling I thought that was a very important measure. I thought it was a long time until we actually acknowledged that gambling is an addiction. As we know addictions can destroy people’s lives. In fact a gambling addiction as many of us have learnt from constituents and from knowing people who have addictions can mean that people can lose their homes their houses and their families because they are addicted to gambling. Those big changes we made were I think very important indeed.This bill makes some more small policy amendments and some technical amendments but it aims to allow the Gambling Act to operate as it was originally intended. We do in fact support this bill. I think that Peter Dunne’s Supplementary Order Paper 454 strengthens the bill to some extent and we believe that whatever we can do to improve the gambling environment we have in New Zealand will be better.We are a nation of gamblers. There is nothing wrong with a flutter now and then. Mr Assistant Speaker as a member from up Waikato way you would be interested to know I went to the Trentham cup this year. Of course once a year some of us go to the races. I know that Mr Bishop was there enjoying a flutter. I did too. I lost my purse of money which was not very much being miserable in terms of the dollar each way I put on but I enjoyed it. I did get some tips from Sue Moroney. None of them was any good. But I did enjoy the flutter that I had and I think that New Zealanders do. They like the opportunity to take a Lotto ticket or to have a bet on the horses. No one is denying that.What we are concerned about are those gambling operations that are addictive to New Zealanders. We know that it is not easy to get addicted to Lotto every Saturday night because it does not reinforce you often enough. In fact as you know you are not reinforced at all unless you are one in 10 million or something. But we do know that pokie machines gambling casinos and so on have intermittent reinforcement for the person who is involved in them. So legislation coming out of this Parliament that helps around those issues and allows people to still enjoy a gamble now and then but puts in protections is we think very important indeed.Just in conclusion I have never forgotten that before we put in restrictions on pokie machines under the last Labour Government there was a hotel that had opened up in the poorest part of my electorate. What shocked me was that it was not going to be the beer that was poured at the bar that was going to keep it going; it was the pokie machines that were being put in where the poorest people of my electorate live. They were encouraged to have a go on the pokie machines for some hope. So I have to say that at that moment I knew that if that was the only way the hotel was going to make money—encouraging people to gamble more on pokie machines—we had things wrong which is why I am glad that we have restricted the numbers.We have involved local government much more in gambling than we had in the past. I would like to see us do that with alcohol. We have got a way to go because we have not addressed that issue properly yet. I look forward to when we do address the alcohol issues in terms of local government’s ability to have alcohol plans and so on. So we do support the bill. It is long overdue. We are pleased that it is finally coming to its third reading. I say to Mr Barker who will definitely be glued to his crystal set that this bill is finally going to be passed.