Bradford Sue: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 It is going on for 2 years now since we debated the first reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) in this House in August 2007. I think many MPs not to mention members of the public and interested groups will have just about forgotten that the bill ever existed. In the interim we have had the whole select committee process the bill’s report back to Parliament and a general election. I was beginning to wonder whether this bill would ever see the light of day again and I have to say that despite the Green Party’s many reservations about its manifest inadequacies it would have been a big waste of a lot of effort if this bill had just quietly died as a victim of the change in Government. So I thank the new administration for bringing the bill back to the House but at the same time I call on National and its partner parties to consider doing what Labour seemed so unwilling to do at the time—that is amend the bill so that it can achieve substantially more than it does at present. 
The problem of pokies and the harm that they cause to individuals families employers and communities has not magically disappeared since August 2007. Although pokie spending dropped by nearly 10 percent in the first quarter of 2009 over $200 million was still lost by punters during January to March this year. That is a phenomenal amount of money when one considers the currently rising levels of unemployment and poverty. I also note that in the second and third quarters of last year spending on pokies actually increased. So it is hard to say whether the recent drop-off is seasonal and temporary or whether it is a result of other factors like the recession. I also see that for the year ended June 2008 over $2 billion was lost altogether in all forms of gambling—the second-highest amount ever despite the tighter laws and regulations that have been brought in since the passage of the Gambling Act 2003. Behind all those figures of course are countless tales of human misery: the devastation that ripples outwards when the actions of a problem gambler impact not just on the individual but on all those around him or her often with devastating consequences. 
The bill before us as reported back from the select committee is basically a series of mainly technical amendments—fixing up or improving a number of issues that have arisen since the original Gambling Act became law back in 2003. For example the bill extends criteria on which suitability of people to hold a class 4 gaming licence are judged; does more to define and regulate those who are seen as persons of significant influence in a venue; extends specifications as to what property or services may not be offered as a prize for gambling; clarifies that the venue manager or the holder of a casino operator’s licence must have a policy to identify problem gamblers; and puts more definition around the circumstances in which corporate societies may put gambling proceeds to their own purposes. 
One area where the bill was slightly strengthened by the Government Administration Committee was around information gathering. Many submitters were concerned about the lack of accurate and publicly available information around the distribution of funds. As a result a new clause has been inserted into the bill to require more from the Secretary for Internal Affairs both in terms of what information is collected and how it is published. 
On the other hand the bill was actually weakened during the select committee process in relation to the question of gaming machines being confined to internal areas. The Green Party had welcomed the bill’s original commitment to ensuring that pokie machines could no longer be moved outdoors so that people who smoke can continue to gamble and smoke simultaneously uninterrupted by any considerations of health finance or ethics. Unfortunately the committee saw fit to get rid of this clause and I would like to make a plea to parties in this House to consider seriously reinstating it in a stronger form to ensure that outdoor venues of any nature should be declared unsuitable for class 4 gambling. 
However the much bigger problem with the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2) is that it does not deal substantively with the harm being inflicted on individuals and communities by pokies. As the Green Party said in its minority report attached to the commentary on the bill we believe that the Government should act urgently on a number of measures including devolving greater power to local authorities so that they can reduce the number of pokie venues in their own district—down to zero if they so choose. We should speed up the investigation and application of new technologies such as player tracking and pre-commit cards which can help minimise the harm done in terms of creating and maintaining problem gambling. 
Racing should be capped as an authorised purpose with restrictions on how pokie funds committed to racing are applied. Some trusts give large percentages of their proceeds to racing; a lot of it goes on high-end stakes. The Greens do not think funding the rich end of the racing industry is a suitable purpose for funds extracted from low-income communities and problem gamblers. 
We would like to see it be a requirement for the Department of Internal Affairs to publish class 4 grant reports every quarter along with the electronic monitoring system reports including clear information about where funds come from as well as where they go. At the moment gaming trusts are required to regularly publish whom they give grants to as legislated for in the earlier Gambling Act. However it is considerably harder for those of us with an interest to work out where the funds have come from. What analysis has been done shows a number of inequities such as how much of the gambling proceeds come out of some very low-income communities and how little goes back to them in comparison. 
The Green Party would also like to see reforms to improve the fraught question of the way in which the problem gambling levy is administered. I will be putting forward a number of amendments to the bill when we reach the Committee stage in the House. I hope other members will join the Greens in seriously considering what we might do to improve the bill within the scope of what is possible. I call on National members as well as colleagues from Labour to take a serious look at those amendments when they come forward. 
Many individuals and organisations made submissions on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2). However the process by which the select committee dealt or attempted to deal with submitters was atrocious—unlike anything else I had ever seen since becoming a member of Parliament. Some submitters were treated well; others were treated with downright contempt. Some who had asked to make oral submissions were simply denied the opportunity altogether. Some submitters had their submissions returned without any record of the submission’s arrival at the select committee having been kept in the first place. Some returned submissions were sent back not to the original submitter but to someone else entirely. Very arbitrary decisions were made about what was inside or outside the scope of the bill and so on. I found to my surprise that all of this was deemed legitimate behaviour on the part of the committee but I am glad it is not common practice. 
I see select committees as the engine room of Parliament and of the democratic process. This is the place where MPs work on the minutiae of legislation informed by relevant Government officials and parliamentary staff. It is also the place where any citizen can make representations to us about matters that concern them. I have sat on committees dealing with much more contentious issues than the bill before us tonight. These committees have literally had thousands of submissions—for example on the Employment Relations Bill in 2000 the prostitution reform bill and the bill reforming section 59 of the Crimes Act. Yet those committees when we had far more submissions did not turn away people who wished to make an oral submission. Everyone got their chance to be heard—even if sometimes the time allotted may have been brief. On the whole in every other committee I have been on there was an attempt to treat submitters with fairness and equity even if sometimes mistakes or omissions occurred. I understand that at the moment there is another select committee acting in a similar cavalier way in dealing with submissions on the resource management legislation. 
I would love to see some action taken on a cross-party basis to change the rules by which committees operate so that all submitters have a right to a fair go. I believe we owe it to the democracy that we are here to serve and to the voters who collectively put us in this place to treat submitters whoever they are with some minimum standards of decency and respect.