Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Ki ngā tini mate kua haere ki te pō haere haere haere. [To the many deceased who have passed to the night depart depart farewell.] Can I on behalf of the Green Party acknowledge the grief and loss of those who have lost family members and friends in the Whakaari / White Island tragedy and the dedication commitment and skill of the first responders and those in our health system and all of those who are supporting those families and the recovery effort. The Messara report did highlight the crisis in the racing industry and this bill the second after the Racing Reform Act that was earlier passed by the Parliament is aimed to put in place the reform to provide a really solid basis for the industry. I acknowledge as the previous speaker Barbara Kuriger did just the importance of the industry in terms of the livestock the bloodstock and the export of thoroughbred racing horses to the New Zealand economy. I would like to acknowledge in starting the work by the Minister for Racing the Deputy Prime Minister and his staff for the very constructive engagement on improving the bill to address the Green Party's concerns around minimising gambling harm and the potential for gambling harm. That's why we're really pleased that with the establishment of a new TAB to be the statutory body which controls all race betting it has a different objective from the current one and that it is about ensuring that the risks of problem gambling and under-age gambling are minimised and it balances its objective of raising revenue from betting against this objective of minimising gambling harm. That creates a much better balance. The whole point of this bill in actually separating out racing and betting functions setting up the new TAB and ensuring that in the work of the codes they focus very much on actually administering the codes—that that's separate—is a step forward. The TAB will have that sole focus on providing betting on racing and sports while minimising harm. The other important thing that the bill does is ensure that there's a new Racing Integrity Board established. Now that will be funded from revenue from betting but it will have an investigatory and an adjuditory function and again that is a significant step forward. Now the previous speaker and Nathan Guy talked quite a lot about this issue of racing venues and racecourses. The whole issue of racetrack consolidation has been debated by the industry for decades and the Messara report highlighted how some change is needed there in order to consolidate venues in order to have the revenue to invest in improving racecourses. But what this bill does as I understand it is ensure that it is the codes that make this decision about whether there is to be any consolidation that that is to be achieved through negotiation and that the codes decide how the revenue will then be used and it provides the flexibility potentially for clubs that might decide to sell their racecourse—that they can still run events at other courses. So yes this provision will be controversial and again I hope that clubs and other make submissions but there needs to be consolidation for the industry to flourish. I think the improvements that have been made to the bill taking into account the recommendations of the Messara report ensuring that the decision making rests with the code and that it's not Government coming in and making those decisions are the best interests of the industry. So the Green Party will be supporting the bill and we recognise that both in terms of the objectives of the TAB with the minimising of harm and the separation of race betting and code management and with this objective of the whole bill around minimising gambling harm it has been an improvement to what was originally proposed and we thank the Deputy Prime Minister for engaging with that. Thank you.