McClay Todd: Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 (Application to Casinos) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
McClay Todd: Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 (Application to Casinos) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7190. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 This bill the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 (Application to Casinos) Amendment Bill is a particularly bad piece of legislation. What the Green Party is trying to do is fix a problem that does not exist. I get that Green members do not like casinos. I think they do not like them because people have a choice to go there and have fun should they want to. The only part of our legislation around our police force that the Greens seem to be in favour of is when you get the fun police out to look at normal New Zealanders who are choosing to have fun in their recreational time and the Greens want to stop this. You see this bill covers only casinos. What the Greens are saying is that criminals who may gain revenue for themselves through illegal actions go only to casinos to use that revenue and I would challenge that. If the author of this bill really was concerned about this issue the bill would include New Zealand Lotto and it would include the TAB and it would include many other places that non - law-abiding citizens—criminals—can go to spend their ill-gotten gains. 
This is nothing worse than political grandstanding of the very worst type—in fact the worst type of political grandstanding I have seen since I came to this House 4 years ago. I believe that the author of this bill is wasting the House’s time with this legislation. There are already things that deal with this and they deal with it for all companies in New Zealand that are involved with any type of financial transaction. Of course the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act an Act that went in to place in 2009 already deals with this. Therefore casinos are covered by that piece of legislation. Casinos themselves have special legislation in New Zealand around host responsibility—a host responsibility programme. This is not them choosing to do this by themselves. Actually the host responsibility programme comes about because the current legislation that provides for casino licences demands it. I believe that casinos take this extremely seriously because if they do not they put their licence to operate a casino at risk in this country. 
We also have the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act which went through the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee in the last term of Parliament when I was a member of that committee. That piece of legislation does a number of things. It says to all businesses in New Zealand that are involved with financial transactions which therefore includes casinos that when there is activity that is deemed to be unusual or different or over a certain threshold—$6000 in some cases; $10000 in others—they must keep records they must get extra information from the person conducting that transaction and they must be assured that the funds that are being used are being done so appropriately and have not been gained through terrorism or through money-laundering or through ill-gotten gains. So already we have legislation in place to cover this. 
I come back to what I said earlier. The Green Party does not like casinos because everyday New Zealanders have the choice to go there and enjoy themselves. We will be voting against this legislation because it adds absolutely nothing at all. It does not fix any problem at all. If the Green Party was serious about this it actually would have spent some time researching the issue and coming forward with things that actually might help rather than saying that it is going to beat up on an industry in New Zealand that this House has said is legitimate and has a right to be here that employs so many thousands of New Zealanders up and down the country that plays an important part in our economy and that has safeguards placed upon it. This bill does absolutely nothing at all and I will be very happy to vote against it shortly. Thank you.