Salesa Jenny: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 04 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4367. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): The Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) is one that is crucial to me. This bill is important to me personally because even though a large proportion of our people Pacific people do not gamble unfortunately the ones who do are at a really high risk of becoming problem gamblers. I would like to acknowledge the speaker just before me from the other side of the House Joanne Hayes as well as the Hon Ruth Dyson for their speeches. I agreed with both of their speeches.Greater harm minimisation measures should have been included in this bill to mitigate the addictive design that gambling machines have. Pacific people are four times more likely than others to become problem gamblers. This is when you compare Pacific people with the general population. Pacific people make up 6.5 percent of our population. However they make up 21.1 percent of problem gamblers in this country. Studies have shown that Pacific gamblers are also spending large amounts of money when compared with Māori when compared with Asians and when compared with Europeans. The annual average that Pacific people spend on gambling is around $13648 a year. However the average spending of a European by comparison is about $1761. There is a huge difference between these two figures.Last year the New Zealand Herald on 14 August 2014 reported that the funds that people put into pokie machines are by far being spent by those who live in the poorer parts of Auckland. However those funds from gaming grants do not usually go back to those poorer parts of Auckland. What the data shows is that it is the wealthiest parts of Auckland—it is the most affluent parts of Auckland which do not gamble as much—that are the ones that take the majority of the grants from these gaming machines. So the saying goes “The poor get poorer andthe rich get richer.” Unfortunately this also happens with the distribution of gaming funds back to the community. The research that was covered by the New Zealand Herald last year was conducted by Auckland Council. The council challenged the Government to consider a fairer way of distribution of these grants back to the community and I actually agree with the council. It would be really really great to have a system that would actually make sure that those who are most deprived—the poorest parts of Auckland actually including the electorate I represent Manukau East—have better access to this funding. This would actually happen if the system was a fair one. My sincere hope is that this bill the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) actually addresses this issue.The research that the council conducted also showed that those who gamble the most unfortunately actually live in my electorate of Manukau East. The comparison that the study showed is that those who live in Ōtara or Papatoetoe spend about $274 per person per year on these pokie machines and this is compared with say someone who lives in Ōrākei who spends about $49 per person per year on the pokie machines. So when you look at the distribution of these funds what this study showed is that those who live in Ōrākei get a return from these gaming machines in terms of grants at a rate of about 152 percent and those who live in Albert-Eden yet another wealthy place in Auckland get a return of 176 percent from these gaming machines. Yet places like Ōtāhuhu—and I am the MP for the Ōtāhuhu area—get only 22 percent by way of grants from these gaming machines. This is absolutely not a fair way of distributing these funds. The funds are supposed to go back to the community. I would actually strongly argue that yes they should go back to the community but how about getting these funds back to the community that they actually come out from which are the most deprived places in Auckland including Manukau East Ōtara Papatoetoe and Ōtāhuhu? Thank you so much.