Turei Metiria: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21312] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Greens are pleased to see in the supplementary estimates that some further money has been invested in the area of problem gambling and the enforcement of the gambling regulations although it is not enough to curb the social and economic harm caused by the proliferation of gambling opportunities including particularly pokie machines. My colleague Sue Bradford has been a strong and effective advocate for responsible gambling laws in this country that provide the greatest possible protection to our community from the harms of gambling. Sadly this protection does not yet exist in our law. 
In the health supplementary estimates there is $2.4 million for the funding of costs related to the administration of the problem gambling levy. That levy remains very small when compared with the profits derived from gambling The gambling industry has of course a massive vested interest in keeping the problem gambling levy as low as possible. Many of the industry’s representatives have argued that the scale of the gambling problem is exaggerated and that the cost of dealing with it is overrated. But in 2003 gamblers in this country lost a record $2 billion—an increase of 9 percent on the year before. That is $5 million a day in this country much of which is taken out of the homes of some of our lowest-income families. The industry continues to complain about the levy and clearly wants to keep problem gambling strategies focused on treatment rather than on the additional public health goals of health promotion and harm minimisation. 
We need only recall the case a couple of years ago of the pokie-machine outlet money-lending business and problem gambling treatment centre all within the same building complex and all associated with the same single director—a lucrative immoral ring of business interests. We need only recall the pokie-machine bar in the Otara shopping centre that contributed to the costs of a fenced children’s playground right outside the front door of that pokie bar. Or we need only recall the objection by the gambling industry to the regulations requiring pokie machines to display how long a person has played and how much money he or she has lost to know that the industry is committed to the maximisation of its profits and not the minimisation of social and economic harms from gambling. 
Sky City recently wailed about how these regulations would lose it money—regulations that will affect all new slot machines after 1 October this year and all machines from 2009. This company has over 2000 gaming machines in New Zealand with a forecast annual profit of $100 million. This complaint was despite the Government figures that show that New Zealand has 100000 problem gamblers who contribute $2 billion to that industry. Eighty percent of people who come in for treatment from the Problem Gambling Foundation say that they have a problem with pokie machines; for Maori women the figure is 96 percent. 
The fact that the proceeds of pokie addictions are then used for the benefit of all sorts of worthy causes should not be an excuse for any values-based group to continue to endorse this industry. The Greens would like the many community organisations that now rely on the proceeds of human misery for their continued survival to consider other funding options and for Government and other non-gambling funders to better resource the sector so that groups do not feel obliged to depend on the addictions and desperation of some of our poorest people for the pursuance of their good works. 
Despite some of the minor improvements over the last 6 months—and we note the increase in the Vote Internal Affairs supplementary estimates of $1.17 million to enforce the new regulations in the Gambling Act—the levy and the legislation so far are not enough to deal with these harms. The Greens want to see much greater reduction in the number of pokie machines operating in this country and a total revamp of the way the profits of those that remain are distributed.