van de Molen Tim; Rurawhe AdrianTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a good day. Here we are at the third reading now of the Racing Reform Bill and it's been heart-warming to follow this process as we've gone through to see their support now for the racing industry. I'm encouraged in particular—in the Waikato racing is a significant part of our success as a region and we are a proud racing area. This will have a strong impact—a positive impact—for those participants within the industry and potentially encourage more to enter the industry as well. So I'd like to acknowledge the great work of Ian McKelvie our racing spokesperson in this particular process because he has put a lot of effort into it and we got to the point where we were able to get some changes through select committee supported by the Government parties which was fantastic and I'll touch on those shortly.But the other aspects which came actually as a result of the previous legislation under the former Government was looking around the race fields" legislation to bring in consumption and use charges in terms of the information sources and then the ability for overseas punters to participate in gambling on New Zealand products races or games as it were. It's important that they make a contribution and so that original legislation under the previous Government now wrapped into this particular bill captures that quite nicely and will ensure that an additional contribution is made from those offshore providers and quite rightly so.It is a shame though that the racing Minister didn't just progress the previous bill which would have enabled those provisions to have been brought in 12 months ago now which would have seen the racing industry receive $15 million to $20 million of additional revenue over the last 12 months which would have been gratefully received as we've heard from numerous contributors today and in previous stages around the need for additional financial support. So it was a shame that the Minister wasn't able to put that through at the time when it was broadly supported. We could then have had of course the current changes brought forward in a second proposal. As we've heard already there will be an additional proposal in terms of changes to racing legislation.Look that's gone under the bridge unfortunately; it's a shame the racing industry has missed out on that from the Minister but we're in a good space now with this and this will see the totalisator levy repealed over two years. The previous Green member Eugenie Sage suggested three or so years; actually it's two years specifically and that will be wound down over that period. So that will then bring in an additional $13 million to $14 million a year for the racing sector once that's fully repealed and obviously stepped down between now and then. So that's good.Now the two key points that were important for us when we were considering this through select committee in terms of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA)—the board—was around having a finite end date on it. So the initial proposal as it was put forward by the Minister was that the transition authority be in place for 12 months and if for whatever reason the final solution as it was seen by the Minister was not able to be implemented then that could be extended. But there was no end line to what that extension might look like. It could have continued in perpetuity potentially under the original proposal. So that raised some concerns for us and for a number of submitters as well.So we were able to get agreement from all parties. I'd like to thank the Government parties for that as well—to agree to a maximum two-year extension to that particular capacity for that board to transition through that phase. So that was quite important because all parties entered into this or are entering into it in good faith. We heard that although there are no designated positions on the board in regard to specific codes or specific sports they will have regard to both racing industry knowledge and sporting industry knowledge at a national level. So those are good provisions but it requires all those parties to act in good faith—which they agreed to do which was very very gracious of them and appropriate. Having that finite deadline was important to give them some comfort that that good faith was appropriate and would be respected. The other key provision that we were very very excited to see was that the Government support was requiring the Minister for Sport and Recreation to be consulted. As Nikki Kaye had pointed out—and I'd like to thank her for her work on this from the sport and recreation perspective as well—that's not agreement with the Minister for Racing but the Minister for Racing must consult the Minister for Sport and Recreation which is appropriate to get some distribution balance as best as possible across the racing codes and also the sporting codes. We'll see that transition over time as it becomes quite fluid potentially with the volume of international betting on sports potentially increasing. We don't know exactly what that will look like. The officials weren't entirely sure what the modelling of those mock scenarios may play out like. That's why it's important to continue to evolve this and to make sure that consultation happens between those Ministers to ensure that distributions are supporting all industries as best as possible. But this in particular will support the racing industry. I'm very pleased with that. It will be great for my region and Waikato and so I'm particularly thankful for that. I look forward to seeing renewed enthusiasm for the racing industry as a result of this passing today and I thoroughly commend it to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I understand that this is a split call. I call Paul Eagle—five minutes."