Bennett David; Williams PotoHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. The National Party also supports this bill and I would like to first acknowledge the Rt Hon Winston Peters who has always taken a very active interest in racing over many years and has seen himself as a bit of a saviour to that industry. I wish to dispel some of those doubts that people may have—himself included—in his potential role in saving the industry.But I would say this: the New Zealand racing industry and the breeding industry have an exceptional future ahead of it; that it is an industry that will take on the Asian markets and deliver a product that will be bought by those communities. You don't need thousands of people at racecourses these days. We see what the international developments are in racing. Just go look at Singapore and Hong Kong and you can see what's out there in the market. The Chinese market will open up and when it does open up there will be billions of dollars that will be bet on racing. There are only three or four countries in the world that have a good product and they are New Zealand Australia Ireland and probably America. We are situated as one of the best countries to take advantage of the world racing and betting market when it opens up and it will and I implore the New Zealand Parliament to support reform in racing because we need it so our racing community can take advantage of that opportunity.Now in saying this we had legislation that we put in front of this Parliament before the last election and we did it through the Primary Production Committee. I'd like to thank the select committee members that were part of the process to make sure that went through quickly—and Kieran you were part of that and thank you. Then we had the Messara report and I could understand a new Minister coming in wanting to get a report and he got the leading Australians to come in and make that report. Now when that report came out I remember the Minister was in Hamilton and he said It's an all or nothing thing". Those were his exact words—you had to do it all. Well that was never going to happen because the Messara report was far too detailed. So what actually happened was the Minister had to take a step back and he had to create a new body that would look into the Messara report and work out what could and what couldn't be done at this time.Now I'm not trying to attack the Minister or anything. I'm just putting out the history of what's happened. That body has come back with basically a two-part process and what they want to do around the racing industry and that's where the Messara report should've been in the first place. It shouldn't have all been in one hit. The Minister should have gone out there and said "No there's going to be a staged process". The first stage is race fields. That is the legislation that had been started by the Hon Nathan Guy and we had completed the work on it and effectively it's not much different here now. The race fields part of this bill is not much different. It's still got an information charge it's got a consumption charge it's got those basic things that race fields had in it. That's one part of this bill. It's not all of this bill but it is one part and that effectively enables us to be able to take bets overseas to make sure that New Zealanders get the value for our product. I realise there are issues that the Hon Gerry Brownlee raised but this is something that has been put in most racing countries now. Australia has consumption information charges in some of its states and there is that buy-in from those big betting agencies to pay that money because they realise that they want to be part of that community. So although you can't legislate overseas and make someone else pay a tax overseas there is that agreement by those agencies to do so. That has shown to be working in the Australian model and when we did this bill we had those commitments from those agencies when it came through.Now that race-fields legislation could have gone through a year or so ago and as Mr McKelvie said a million dollars a month has been lost out of this industry because that legislation hasn't gone through. Now the Minister might want to have his name on it and not the National Party name; that's fine. But putting that ahead of an industry and $16 million or whatever it has been in that period of time just isn't good enough. That race fields part of the legislation could have been passed last year or the year before.There's a duty that is on racing and a new part of this bill was to take away the duty. Most in the racing field will want that duty to go back into the industry. I think it is a good idea that it goes back in the industry and I would support that. But we don't want that money to go back to just the pool of bets and that's where the Rt Hon Winston Peters doesn't understand what he could do in this area. By putting it just in the pool of betting funds it's going to bring a couple of hundred bucks to an average race meeting. That's not going to make any difference to the owners the trainers the jockeys—all those people that are out there. It's not going to encourage that breeding industry. That $13 million to $14 million dollars should be allocated to a fund which is out there for clubs to go and to apply for if they're making strategic change in the industry if they are willing to make that change around having new race tracks that meet the new needs of the market if they're willing to have races that actually pay a value that encourage people to have a horse at that track at that race.That middle tier of racing is what the opportunity for that money is not just to put it in the general pot and let it go. This Minister hasn't worked that out and that will be his failing in these reforms because all he's doing is just moving it to the bigger pot as the Hon Gerry Brownlee said which is a model that hasn't worked in the past. We need to use that money strategically in a way that will develop this industry. That is the opportunity that is in front of us now.There's another opportunity in front of us—and I think the Hon Nikki Kaye raised it very well—and that is that sports betting is now effectively a third of the TAB turnover and that will continue to increase. As a great football person the Champions League is the greatest sporting event in the world. That will have billions of dollars of money bet on it. In the future you know—you look at the New Zealand under-20 World Cup football team. It will probably have more money bet on them around the world than in a major race in New Zealand. That is the future of betting and it is the future of sport.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Do they get the money?Hon DAVID BENNETT: They do get the money at the moment—they do. But the problem is under the bill it's all through regulation. So those sporting codes are now told they need to trust the Rt Hon Winston Peters: "Trust me I will look after you." I challenge the Rt Hon Winston Peters to put a Supplementary Order Paper up because you're only going to give two weeks for this House. I want you to put a Supplementary Order Paper up in those two weeks which says there will be no net loss to those sporting codes from the percentages they are getting now. I want you to give them a recast iron guarantee that they are not going to be subsidising the racing industry. They don't deserve to do that.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Subsidise the racing industry?Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well the potential is that that could happen and that is the risk. The Minister can easily mitigate that risk now through the select committee and also the Supplementary Order Paper process just to give that one clause—it won't hurt anybody. That will leave a lot of comfort to our side of the House. It will leave a lot of comfort to the rugby—Rt Hon Winston Peters: Was it in the member's bill?Hon DAVID BENNETT: —the cricket the football and all those others. The Minister says "Why wasn't it in our bill?" Well in our bill we had those clauses in the bill so you knew what percentage they were going to get. Hon Member: No no no.Hon DAVID BENNETT: They did because you had that in there in the race fields. The Minister's put that into regulation now so that can be debated in the future once the bills passed but those codes have no way of coming back.I implore the sensible members of the Labour Party over there to support sport as well because that is where the TAB is going to grow in the future—it's going to be a big area of growth and there is that opportunity just to put that one clause in which I think would give a lot of comfort to a lot of people in the sport sector and also wouldn't hurt this bill at all.So this is a bill which we need to do. The racing industry is bigger than those that are just in the industry. It's bigger because it represents part of the New Zealand psyche and in provincial New Zealand it is part of the lifestyle of being a New Zealander. It's also part of being proud to be a New Zealander every time we win a Melbourne Cup or whatever. But the reality is that we need smart reforms. We don't just need patched-up reforms from a Minister that couldn't work it out in the first instance had to redo it and is looking at doing a two-stage process. The second stage is going to be the difficult one because that's effectively where you outsource the TAB. The Minister has put a value on the TAB and in putting that value on the TAB he has made it very difficult for that second stage.So I would encourage the Labour New Zealand First and Green members—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I apologise to the member your time has expired.I call the Hon Clare Curran. I understand this is a split call."