Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The Parliament is being asked to hugely truncate its capacity to scrutinise this legislation that is about the allocation of $2.8 billion a year in betting; it's a very serious issue. If the Minister had proposed to pick up the provisions that my colleague David Bennett developed—very important provisions in this bill—that provide for New Zealand getting a fairer revenue from overseas where there's betting on New Zealand for the provisions that allow for the racing industry to get income on bets on racing events overseas if that bill had been through a full select committee process and public submissions I would have been quite relaxed. I think members on our side of the House would have said Those provisions have been well debated and we'd be happy to support those." This bill goes well beyond that. This makes radical changes of which there are very substantive interests of which New Zealanders need to be able to have a say.Can I start with the first of those in respect to the appointment of the board. The current racing board has representatives of all of the three codes—thoroughbreds and the like—and there has been no opportunity for those sectors to have any say. I'm sure they'll be very interested to know that we are moving from a board where each of those codes appoints members to the board to one where the Minister has absolute control and absolute discretion. Here's a really big change in this bill of which there needs to be proper scrutiny and the opportunity for public submissions: an issue I suspect as a former Minister of sport and others in the House will have a strong interest. At the moment there is a guarantee in the law that for any sports bet 5 percent goes to that national code; that's being repealed. Now do the netballers do the basketball association do the mums that stand on the side in the winter and watch the rugby games do the people that support hockey do all those people know—SPEAKER: Order! I want to remind the member that this is a very prescribed debate. It is a matter of the length of the submissions length of the period for the report back where the committee can meet and similar things. We can't go into the substance of the legislation.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Just speaking to a point of order—SPEAKER: No there was no point of order; there's a ruling.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Minister in charge of this bill gave a very wide-ranging speech in respect of the shortened select committee period and I just simply ask for the Chair to apply a consistent approach. The issue is—SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! I told the member that there is not a point of order; there is a ruling. He will speak to the bill if he wants to continue.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This is a very shortened period of just two weeks of which to give the opportunity for over 150 different sporting codes around New Zealand that are affected. With a period of just two weeks how much realistically will there be the opportunity for all of those sports organisations to get their heads around these very significant changes around their current guarantee of 5 percent and for them to be able to make submissions and have proper input into that process when the House is giving the select committee a period of only two weeks?I'm also concerned about the information the committee will have. This Government says it's the most open and transparent Government and yet the entire regulatory impact statement has been blocked out. How is the select committee in two weeks to get to the bottom of the very critical issues when the Government has chosen to block out every single page of the regulatory impact statement on the issue of removing the levy or the gaming levy that applies to the racing industry? I put it to the House that there is no way that the select committee can do justice to those very significant provisions repealing a gaming levy that has been about since 1972 in just two weeks.Now the Minister who has promoted this very short submission period has said that "Well everybody who's affected has been consulted." Well actually there's a very significant group of people who have not been consulted. This bill proposes to give an exemption to the gaming levy only for sports betting and for horse racing and leaves the levy for all those that are in either casinos Lotto or any other industry. Of course they will be affected. We are setting up an un-level playing field where one sector is exempted from the levy but the others are not. The Lotteries Commission those that receive funds from the Lotteries Commission those that are affected—in terms of those other industries that are involved in gaming—who will be disadvantaged by this bill need a reasonable time frame to get around the 31 pages of this bill and the 14 clauses that directly impact on those others that provide gaming services because this skews the level playing field heavily in favour of one form of gambling. The others? The others need to have the opportunity to be able to have their say. I also want to point out that it is equally important for the racing codes to have the opportunity for submissions. That is because this bill repeals the formula by which there is the allocation of funding between the different sorts of racing codes. So rather than them having definitiveness around the amount of money that goes either to our greyhounds to our harness racing or to our thoroughbreds that's going it's a matter of discretion. There needs to be the opportunity for every one of our thoroughbred clubs every one of our greyhound racing clubs every one of our harness racing clubs to get into the detail of this bill that makes very substantive changes to the repeal of the funding formula that affects hundreds of millions of dollars for that sector. This is a 31-page bill. This is a bill that has three schedules. This is a bill that has 100 subclauses. Does any member of this House really believe that two weeks is sufficient to be able to scrutinise a bill that is involved in the allocation and the distribution of $2.8 billion a year of betting activities? It is an insult. I want to point this out: why is it that the Government has 12 months to consider it? Why is it that in terms of the Messara review there's six months of time and just two weeks for the Parliament? It is an absolute insult to the Parliament to be saying "Well you get two weeks to test these issues but an independent review gets six months and the Government has actually had these issues for 12 months." Now the Standing Orders set out and say that if a bill is provided for less than four months we need to have a special debate. I've seen bills that have said that they're set down for three months maybe two months. Anybody who thinks this bill is going to have any substantive level of scrutiny in two weeks is really kidding themselves. It's deliberately being sent to a select committee that has no experience in the racing industry. It's solely being sent there because it's a chair of the committee but the time frame they have to consider it is—they did not consider the previous racing bill; they have no expertise in that area. The idea that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that has nothing to do with racing is going to be able to give adequate scrutiny to this bill in two weeks is inadequate. I do make this point absolutely seriously: if there is any industry in the world that is open to corruption and needs transparency it is the issue of the gambling industry. It is more than any other open to the risk of skulduggery and yet this legislation is making huge changes to the way in which those hundreds of millions of dollars are being allocated. It is absolutely proper if New Zealand wants to hang on to its reputation as the least corrupt and most transparent country in the world—if we want to hang on to that reputation by goodness we need to make sure that legislation in the gaming industry is scrutinised properly that we get the detail right that we get the checks right. That simply is not possible with a two-week submission process.The process of this bill brings into huge question the probity of the way in which this country manages the $2.8 billion a year in the gaming industry."