Lotu-Iiga Sam: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLotu-Iiga Sam: Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11899. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie):It is a pleasure for me to take a call on this the second reading of the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill. I also want to thank Te Ururoa Flavell for his leadership on this issue. It is an important issue not just in my communities in Maungakiekie and South Auckland and Auckland but across this country. This is a scourge—this gambling scourge—that certainly needs to be addressed and we are doing it with this bill. I want to acknowledge Te Ururoa Flavell for his leadership and for his soon to be leadership of theMāori Party. He has been a great backbencher and he will make a fine leader going forward in this Parliament and with theMāori Party going forward. It is a pleasure for me to support this bill.Across this House we have always accepted that gambling is a legal activity and what this bill does is it regulates the access to gambling facilities. It attempts to minimise the harm around that activity. But gambling is not just the scourge of my communities. We all know that there are teachers there are lawyers and there are even politicians who gamble. So let us not say that this is a problem defined to one area but across the country. It is also personal because I have had numerous constituents come into my electorate office in Onehunga in Maungakiekie and I have seen the broken relationships. I have seen kids who have gone without the essentials the broken families and the broken relationships. It affects our communities right across this country.We just heard Ruth Dyson talk about “her and other experts”. I do not know how she can claim to be an expert alongside these other supposed experts who have made submissions on this bill. She named an academic. She named the Problem Gambling Foundation which I acknowledge and the Salvation Army which does good work but what this bill does is that it enables the introduction of harm minimisation devices through regulation. That is one thing. It will enable us to update regulations as these new technologies are advanced—as they are developed. We have seen how in Australia they have had difficulties introducing some forms of these technologies and so we have given within this bill greater flexibility through regulations to allow us to introduce those technologies when it becomes clear that they have an effect on problem gambling.Secondly this bill will enable us to ensure a minimum percentage of gambling proceeds will generally go to community groups in the area where they are raised. That allows for flexibility. I know the last member who spoke talked about how there were concerns that people were benefiting outside the areas of where the funds were generated but we had some strong submissions from national organisations and regional organisations that would be impacted adversely should the corralling of funds be taken to the extreme in respect of local organisations.The third point I want to raise is that the bill also gives more flexibilities to councils to allow venues to move outside of low socio-economic neighbourhoods where that is supported by the venue and that local community. We saw in one of the submissions where maps were shown of high-deprivation areas where there were high concentrations of these machines. Certainly our Government—this National Government—supports the movement of those machines away from those communities where they have been known to damage local people who have gambling problems.We made some changes at the Commerce Committee. The original bill did talk about harm minimisation devices that may be introduced through licensing conditions. Well we thought that introducing them on an ad hoc case by case basis through licensing conditions was not the appropriate way to go in terms of progressing the bill. We thought that regulations would enable us to introduce new technologies on a mandatory basis nationwide rather than through those individual licences and I think that this provision will work going forward. Although I am not entirely happy about how regulations are delegated to officials to Ministers and to future Parliaments—personally I think measures should be in the primary legislation and should be debated in this Chamber—in my view this particular clause will establish better technologies and more flexibility going forward and it will go towards minimising harm.In terms of venue transfers the original bill would have allowed councils to shut down venues and ban gambling. In our view as I have said earlier in my contribution tonight gambling is a permitted activity it is a legal activity and this goes a step too far. So what we have said is that we will support the transfer of venues out of low socio-economic neighbourhoods and into areas like the central business districts of various cities and provinces. We support that. I think it is a good measure. It supports the sinking-lid policies that many councils already have in place—Denise Roche: It’s not what you’re saying.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: It may interest the House—I know that Denise Roche there is a former councillor in Auckland—that the number of pokie machines in this country has actually declined since this National Government has come into power. In the last 4 years it has declined on average by 550 machines a year.Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How much?Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: 550 machines a year Mr Bakshi. What that translates to is an 11.2 percent reduction in the number of pokie machines under this National Government. That is something we should be proud of as a National Government. That is something that the Opposition parties do not want to talk about—that the amount of pokie machines in this country has come down. So when you translate the 230 machines that are under the New Zealand International Convention Centre deal—just over 1 percent of the total pokies in this country a quite insignificant number of machines—Andrew Little: Defensive—here comes the guilt.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: You think that the sky is falling. Andrew Little or Chicken Little thinks that the sky is falling when we are doing the convention centre deal tomorrow—the legislation is having its first reading tomorrow—when it is only 1 percent of total pokies in this country. It is only 1 percent of total pokies in the country.Furthermore annual expenditure on pokie machines is falling. In 2008 when this National Government took over it was $912 million—$912 million. Today I can happily say that it has gone down to $840 million. So there is less money going into pokie machines today than under the Labour Government. The people opposite were responsible for $912 million and it is now $840 million. That is 8 percent less money going into pokies and 8 percent less damage in our communities. So that is something we can be proud of.We will debate that issue tomorrow night but what I am saying about the local distribution of proceeds is that the original bill had 80 percent of gaming proceeds to be distributed in the local area. As I have already said it really is about having the flexibility in the legislation through regulations because what sports clubs and other social service organisations that rely on gaming trust funding said to us inside of the select committee was that they did not want the adverse consequences of us messing around with the funding. It was not represented as the last member Ruth Dyson—the so-called expert in gambling—said. It was not about them saying that the money would go; it was about them saying that they were concerned that the risks were that they would not get the same amounts of money under another distribution mechanism. I think that is really important.I just want to say that this Government has already announced earlier this year $55 million with a 3-year strategy for problem gambling $25 million for front-line intervention $20 million for public health services and $6.6 million for research evaluation. This Government is doing more than any other Government to minimise harm around gambling. This Government has reduced the number of pokies in our communities. This Government by building the convention centre in 3 years will produce jobs and opportunities to feed the kids of the families that need those jobs and opportunities. This Government stands for harm minimisation jobs and opportunities and that is why the people of New Zealand support our Government. Thank you very much.