Martin Tracey: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6459. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chair. I would like to take just a short call to support the contribution by my colleague Clayton Mitchell and it is an appeal to the Minister in charge of the bill the Hon Peter Dunne with regard to Mr Mitchell’s Supplementary Order Paper 95.What I hope the Committee heard was a gentleman who is actually following the values of New Zealand First which we articulated when we first came into this House. Those are that we will not oppose legislation just for the hell of it; we will oppose legislation that is in our view badly written. What Mr Mitchell has articulated is as a person who knows this industry and who understands the practicalities of it. He complimented the Minister several times during his contribution because the Minister had written a bill that in his view and in his knowledge of this industry—down on the street where this bill is going to land where the New Zealand businesses are going to have to work with it—he understands what those businesses are going to have to do. He complimented the Minister on changes that he had made and he asked the Minister to recognise that New Zealand First would like to support this bill.But there is one change that we feel needs to be made and that is around the payment structure. I have heard the Labour Party contribution and the Green Party contribution with regard to not having commission payable for class 4 gambling because it incentivises it. Mr Mitchell in his contribution argued from the real perspective from the perspective of the business owner how that does not make sense. It may very well be that for politicians sitting in this Chamber it might make perfect sense in theory and on paper. But when you are in business and Mr Mitchell told you all the other criteria that are there by which you cannot promote gambling—and I thought the pipis going off in the sun was a particularly good metaphor and one I had not heard before. It was the voice of reason about a small change that is required to gain another party’s support for this piece of legislation.I want to also comment on the fact that the contribution from the Green Party talked about problem gambling and harm minimisation. We have heard this conversation before and all due credit to them—they stay on track; they stay on message. What we know to be true is that small bars and RSAs and so on who have a few gambling machines report more problem gamblers than any casino in New Zealand and they get levied for it. They get charged because they report more problem gamblers to organisations to actually assist them to work with their problem. You could argue that that is because they create more. Or you could argue that the casinos do not report them because the casinos do not know them and that bars and RSAs are actually doing these people a service by having them come and gamble with them.I heard Miss Roche also say that Auckland Council supported many parts of this bill. Auckland Council has a sinking lid on gambling machines on pokie machines inside the Auckland city boundaries and yet the Government supports Skycity. So from that perspective to suggest that there should be more harm minimisation inside this bill is the wrong place to be directing that criticism in our view. Small bars RSAs and local community organisations that have pokie class 4 gambling machines are reporting more often. They know their clients more regularly. They care about those individuals. They do not wait until an individual is incredibly in debt before they put in face recognition. They do not wait until a person is beyond the pale as casinos have been doing and so we see that as a non-argument inside this piece of legislation.So again we appeal to the Minister. This is a small Supplementary Order Paper. It is a small change that we believe would improve the bill. We hope that the Minister has an open mind. I hope that the Minister listened and believed that Mr Mitchell came from a place of knowledge and a place of good intent around actually improving this bill. It was not from a place of politics; it was from a place of intent. So with that contribution I say that unfortunately unless this Supplementary Order Paper is able to be supported by the Minister and the National Party members and the majority of the Committee New Zealand First is unable to support the rest of the bill. Kia ora.