O'Connor Simon: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:328. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I am pleased to take a call on this bill. I just acknowledge the work that has been done obviously by previous Ministers and committees particularly those colleagues of mine who have been on the Government Administration Committee.We are dealing here with Part 1 and as the former speaker Chris Hipkins has noted this is quite a technical part primarily around definitions so I will try to keep to that. I suppose the overall balance though for the Government is how you take something like gambling—definitional and otherwise—and acknowledge that for many Kiwis it is something that is enjoyable fun consciously entered into freely and so forth but for others of course it becomes a problem an addiction a disease or however we define it. So that is the balance that we attempt to seek here. I found that across my own work in the community over the years visiting different organisations within my electorate of Tāmaki that have gambling machines—particularly those of the class 4 variety—it is that tension ultimately between Kiwis who enjoy quite responsibly the act of gambling and those who enjoy it in a way that is not healthy for them.So I want to pick up the latter question put forward by Chris Hipkins which was why in clause 4(1) in Part 1 around the purpose we are changing “the harm caused by” and substituting that with the “harm from”. I think ultimately what it tries to indicate is that gambling itself can in some instances be the primary cause of trouble or in other instances it is the secondary form. It is something that contributes if you wish towards someone’s harm. So if someone is in a vulnerable position a financially troubled position or whatever you wish to call it gambling itself may not be that which caused it. It may be an indirect cause but it may be a direct cause. So in other words it is saying that there is some harm from gambling but it might not necessarily be the absolute reason why a person is in a situation of harm. So it is a subtle—Chris Hipkins: But why narrow it?SIMON O’CONNOR: I actually do not think it narrows it. My colleague across the Chamber asks why it is narrowing. In fact I think this broadens it ultimately. The older definition in Part 1 of “the harm caused by” is saying that if someone is in a vulnerable position and is a gambler the harm caused is by the gambling. This change to substitute that with “harm from” broadens it out and says that actually there can be a whole lot of contributing factors that have led to the situation. Gambling informs it but it is not necessarily the only one and I think that is probably a healthier way to approach the whole question of gambling.More often than not if I was to draw from my previous experience addiction breeds addiction so often people who have serious gambling problems may also have a tobacco problem or areas of issues with their finances alcohol and so forth. I think actually this change to the purpose clause acknowledges that in a very subtle way by saying that actually gambling again is a part a contribution a contributing factor or perhaps a secondary element in this.But overall as I said at the start Part 1 is definitional. I think it is really important that this bill gets this right. A serious amount of consideration has been put into this bill by the Government Administration Committee. It is trying to work with an area that is quite evolving. I know a number of members have pointed out that this bill was first put forward in 2007 but a lot has changed. We see even in the Supplementary Order Papers that things are changing again. We learn as we go along.So we are seeing some of the definitional changes including around what a “class 4 venue” is. A simple amendment to the words—a little bit like changing “the harm caused by” to “harm from”. A “class 4 venue” now is seeing the whole notion of “conduct” change to operation. I think that is an important distinction. Again the very fact that the class 4 facility is operating is separated from just how it chooses to conduct itself. I think that provides clarity there. The former member—or the previous member rather; he is not former yet—was talking about an eftpos device. It has just broadened that out. I think that 7 or so years ago eftpos for us was a very specific device and it was separate from credit cards and so forth. Now it is almost a ubiquitous phrase that we use.The definition of a “gaming machine” has been changed here in Part 1. That is noted now to be something that is either “totally or partly mechanically or electronically operated” and it is something that is “adapted or designed and constructed” for gambling purposes. Again it is very clear that there is an array of devices that can be employed here. Ultimately as it says here in Part 1 this device this gaming machine is something that “is played or confers a right to participate whether totally or partly by the insertion of money …”.