Smith Nick: Gambling Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Smith Nick: Gambling Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8501] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) 
: 
 I know why the member for Rotorua wants to shut down this debate. It is because what is in this bill is exactly the opposite of what Labour campaigned on in 1999. This bill was meant to be the Responsible Gambling Bill but now it may as well be the “State Sponsored Gambling Bill” because the provisions we see in this part and other parts are an absolute U-turn for Labour members. They are red with embarrassment and so they should be. I also want to challenge the Minister in the chair George Hawkins because I heard so many speeches in the 1990s from this member about the harms of gambling and about how Labour was going to fix it. Then we see that this bill is going to expand gambling in New Zealand and not only that we are going to have the State running it. 
I have to ask what the limits are of this Government’s view of the State’s involvement. If it is good enough for the State to now be involved in running pokie- machines and given that we are now to have Internet gambling I ask the Minister of Internal Affairs where it is all going to stop. Are we next going to have the Government running brothels? I know the Government has made it legal; is that the next vice the Government is going to sponsor? [ 
Interruption 
] I see that Jill Pettis has caught on to the idea. Perhaps I should not mention it because the next minute it will be happening! 
What are the limits? How far will this Government go? Why is the Government determined not only to do a U-turn in its policy approach to gambling but now to have the State enticing New Zealanders to spend more and more of their money on gambling? I say that it is wrong. I say to the Minister that he has presided over the biggest expansion of gambling of any Minister who has ever held the portfolio. Yet he came from a party that was going to take a tighter approach. It is no wonder that the word “responsible” has been deleted from the title of the bill. There is nothing responsible about it. 
Then we come to good old socialism—the State has to run everything. So we have the abolition of an independent authority because this Minister wants to get his sticky little fingers on this big-money industry. So we are going to have the Department of Internal Affairs with its sticky little fingers all over the casinos. I say to the Minister: “If it ain’t broke why try to fix it?”. I have not heard in this debate a single view from any Government member that will tell me what the Casino Control Authority has done wrong. What is it about its functions that requires this takeover bid and for it to be run by a Government department? I tell members that it has nothing at all to do with running effective controls on casinos. It has everything to do with this Labour Minister wanting to get his sticky little fingers closer to the hundreds of millions of dollars that are turned over. 
Then we have another dose of sickly political correctness in this part. We on this side of the House believe in one standard of citizenship. We believe that all New Zealanders regardless of their ethnicity have an equal contribution to make. Yet what we see in this provision with the authority is somehow that when a Maori person plays a pokie- machine goes to a casino or participates in some other way he or she is somehow now different. I say to the Minister that I think that requires some justification. I think it is just another dose of the Government’s sickly political correctness which ordinary New Zealanders have had a gutsful of. We would like the Minister to justify that. 
The last point I make in respect of this part concerns the Department of Internal Affairs. I have to say that of all the Government departments I have watched in my 13 years in this Parliament the greatest doozy is the Department of Internal Affairs. It has a capacity to make a mess of more than anything else. 
Jill Pettis 
: Leave public servants out of this. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: According to Jill Pettis we are not allowed to hold the public service to account. 
Hon David Carter 
: What about Christine Rankin? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Do members remember Christine Rankin? Do members remember Jill Pettis sticking up for the feminist Christine Rankin when her colleague Steve Maharey was getting stuck in? She was cheering with that wenching noise across the Chamber and she now changes her tune.