Turei Metiria: Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 (Application to Casinos) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 (Application to Casinos) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6647. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena koutou katoa e te Whare. I move  
That the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 (Application to Casinos) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 I nominate the Commerce Committee to consider this bill in time. Put simply this bill makes casinos subject to the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009. That Act established a civil forfeiture regime where a person is in receipt of any profits derived from any crime. That person need not be responsible for a party to or convicted of that crime or any other crime to be subject to the forfeiture regime. That is it applies regardless of the person’s guilt. Blame is not an issue under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act only whether or not a person has received goods that were acquired through significant criminal activity. This applies to all legal persons all ordinary persons—humans—in this country all ordinary New Zealanders but casinos are not required under any legislation to return either to the State or to the victim of a crime any profits that they make from the gambling of stolen funds. Casinos are not subject to this law as ordinary New Zealanders are. 
Sometimes those kinds of crimes in casinos are very high-profile. They involve millions and millions of dollars. Often it is money-laundering. Most often though the gambled money has been stolen from small businesses from medium-sized New Zealand businesses from community organisations from friends and from family. These businesses organisations and individuals suffer serious financial impacts often bankruptcy while the casinos get to keep the profits from the gambling of that stolen money. My bill will see an end to the keeping of that stolen money. 
We know that gambling causes harm. Since the horse bolted and casinos were allowed to be established in the 1990s Parliament has been grappling with all the different ways to stop them from causing more harm. In 2003 MPs passed the Gambling Act. The view then was that gambling was a profoundly bad thing especially for the most vulnerable of people and that casinos were seen as members of an industry that needed stringent laws to control regulate and contain them and to stop them from causing more harm to people. The Gambling Act put a lid on the industry preventing more casinos from opening and banning any mechanism that allowed existing casinos to offer more opportunities to gamble. However we know from recent wheeling and dealing that the intentions of this Act have been deliberately subverted. 
My bill was developed in response to the dirty deal that the Prime Minister John Key and Minister Steven Joyce are doing to secure the “Skycity - John Key Casino Convention Centre” in Auckland. Skycity has done everything it can— 
Charles Chauvel 
: The John Key memorial. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: The “John Key Memorial Convention Centre”. That is right. Skycity has done everything it can to get around the Gambling Act in order to expand its operations. It has taken case after case to the courts and relentlessly pursued the Gambling Commission in an effort to squeeze more opportunities to evade the Act. When legal avenues did not work Skycity bosses wined and dined MPs and their staff lobbied Government relentlessly and made donations to politicians and to political parties and eventually it appears that has paid off. John Key knew that the Ministry of Economic Development was investigating the feasibility of a convention centre in Auckland so he offered Skycity a deal. He would allow it up to a third more pokie machines and other harmful gambling concessions if it built the convention centre in Auckland. This would involve changing the Gambling Act but of course he is the Prime Minister and in the infamous words of a previous National Party Prime Minister he would have said to himself I am sure that “there is a little room downstairs in which we fix problems like that.” 
John Key has argued that he made the deal with Skycity because it is a good one and because it will not cost the New Zealand public to build the convention centre. But of course he is wrong. Gambling-related harm costs the New Zealand public millions of dollars a year in bankruptcies arrests incarcerations unemployment divorce poor physical and mental health loss of educational opportunities and suicide. 
Denis O’Rourke 
: And no benefit. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: No benefit. Increases in gambling equal increases in costs and my bill will help to create accountability for and reduce some of those costs. John Key also argued that the convention centre would create a heap of jobs but he was wrong about that too. He so massively inflated the job numbers that the author of the feasibility report came out in the media to correct him. He inflated the numbers by almost double—John Key inflated the job numbers by almost double misleading the public and in my view misleading this Parliament. Making up job numbers to sell the casino convention centre deal to the public is extremely desperate. So is standing up in Parliament waving a study that actually shows pokie machines are more likely to cause problem gambling than the community-based ones but telling MPs that it is the reverse—John Key did that as well. This is blatant hypocrisy. It has followed hard on the heels of Skycity chief executive officer Nigel Morrison trying to argue that Lotto was much worse than casinos again in an attempt to distort the figures in order to sell this dirty deal to New Zealanders. The deal was so questionable that the Auditor-General agreed to investigate it. That investigation is ongoing investigating the process for seeking and assessing proposals on the deal the adequacy of the assessment of the likely costs and benefits and any other matters that the Auditor-General thinks is necessary. 
What has been missing in the discussions around this deal is that the change in law subverts the fundamental intent of the Gambling Act. My bill will help bring some integrity back to this legislation. This bill amends the definition in the principal Act of the term “ ‘unlawfully benefited from significant criminal activity’ to specifically refer to casinos that knowingly having regard to best international practice in detecting problem gambling and criminal activity derive a benefit from significant criminal activity.” 
We know that casinos attract significant criminal activity. The Financial Transactions Reporting Act 1996 and the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 describe casinos as specific typologies of the risk of crime. More provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 come into force in 2013 and those provisions place enhanced obligations on casinos to monitor and report suspicious activity but they do not require casinos to return to those from whom the money was stolen the profits they make from illegal activity and the gambling of stolen funds. There is no justification as to why ordinary New Zealanders should be required to forfeit the profits from criminal activity when casinos which are internationally recognised as drivers of crime and the receivers of stolen property are not also subject to the law. It is just about making them subject to the same law that everybody else is and finding a way to help restore just a tiny bit of the loss that New Zealanders suffer: New Zealand businesses community organisations charities—and we know that much of the money that is stolen from charities is gambled in casinos—families and friends. 
This bill is not about just the Skycity dirty deal. This is about making sure that casinos have a stronger level of regulation and pay back those families those New Zealanders who pay the cost of the operations. It is a fair bill. It places a reasonable obligation on casinos and it helps to reduce the harm that is caused by gambling and gambling addition. I commend this bill to the House.