Gambling Bill

I move, That the Gambling Bill be now read a third time. I want to thank the members of the Government Administration Committee and the staff of the Department of Internal Affairs. Gambling is a complex issue. The challenge is to balance the harm against the benefit. I believe that the bill achieves a good balance. This is reflected in its four main objectives, which are to control the growth of gambling, to reduce the harm caused by gambling, to ensure that gambling raises funds for the community, and to ensure that the community has involvement in decisions about access to gambling. The bill seeks a restraints approach to gambling.

The Supplementary Order Paper in my name amended the bill to allow the Lotteries Commission to sell its products by way of remote interactive gambling. I would like to thank United Future for supporting the Government on this amendment. Over the course of time, this should mean a little more money for the community. At the same time, I want to assure members that the Lotteries Commission’s products will remain relatively harmless. The TAB has run remote interactive gambling on the Internet since 1998. I am confident that this bill strikes an appropriate balance and will significantly improve the current system. I commend the bill to the House.

Today is a sad day. It is a sad day for the families of New Zealand. I note that United Future members are here laughing, smiling, and thinking that it is all just too funny. It is not funny. This bill has some very good provisions. I would like to record that I have given the Minister some credit for them, and I am sure he is aware of that. There are some good provisions, but there are also some shocking provisions, and the allowing by the Lotteries Commission of Internet gambling has to be the worst anti-family provision. It is on a par with the “lesbian father” type of provision that this Government has brought in.

The United Future member might like to roll his eyeballs, and smile and smirk. However, on the one hand he said: “It wasn’t us. The Government did it. Labour forced us into it.”, but on the other hand he has also been quoted as saying: “We’re particularly pleased with the changes allowing the Lotteries Commission to move into Internet-based gaming.” He also said: “It was brought in by the Government at the request of the Lotteries Commission.” So it is all its fault! That was confirmed in Parliament this afternoon by the Minister of Internal Affairs, George Hawkins—so it is all his fault! United Future members cannot make a decision in favour of it—but they really did. That is quite clear. They knew this provision was coming, but they did not alert the public, or the people who voted for them. They kept quiet and let this happen.

That is so sad. It is so sad because not only is this opening up the gates to Internet gambling, but also it is opening the gates to Internet gambling by a State-run agency—that is, the Lotteries Commission. That is so bad. It is as bad as if they said: “Let’s just let the Lotteries Commission now sell and promote cigarettes and alcohol—and, worse than that, we will make it a monopoly situation. In New Zealand only they will be able to do it.” That is exactly what we are doing here.

Plenty of people have said that they would have been quite happy to look at—and, certainly, I would have been happy to look at—Internet gambling on the basis of a Lotto-type thing so that every Saturday people could go on the Internet, rather than have to go down to the shop. A lot of people would have said that that was fair enough. But that is not what we are talking about here. When we had a proper look at this Supplementary Order Paper we realised that it was not that at all, and that it was all about allowing online casinos. Any sort of online gaming will be ripe for the Lotteries Commission.

When members of the Lotteries Commission last came in front of the Government Administration Committee I asked them what they had in place to deal with problem gambling and what they knew about problem gambling. I am very passionately concerned about problem gambling. I have seen what it has done to so many New Zealanders and, in particular, those in south Auckland, where I live and which I represent. It means that so much more money will now come out of local businesses.

If we go to the Minister’s electorate of Manurewa, for instance, we see pokie machine after pokie machine. At least the people who play on those machines have to get out of their beds, take themselves out of the door, trot down the road in a form of dress, and play their game and then, presumably, run out of money. But in this case they will be able to go online with credit cards, and they will not even have to get out of bed to gamble. It is a 24-hour activity, and it will take money out of the communities that can least afford to lose it. That is the sad thing. We are not a party that says that people should not be able to go to a casino or play pokie machines, but we do say that we have to have a safety net there for people who are unable to stop themselves when they should stop.

I heard a member of United Future say the other day that 1 to 3 percent of people in New Zealand have a gambling problem. I am sure that that is exactly what he said. When I was chairperson of the Casino Control Authority, we were told by all of the experts that anything from 3 to 6 percent of people had a gambling problem. The figures are now coming out that in the Manukau City area it is more like 9 percent. That is a big percentage. If we take generally two or more adults in a house, we are talking about quite a large number of households affected very, very badly by problem gambling.

In problem gambling it does not matter how many ambulances are put at the bottom of the cliff. Would it not be a lot better to stop people actually falling over in the first place? This bill will not help that. It will very much hurt the very people whom we in Parliament should be doing our very utmost to protect. I note that the member for the Progressive Coalition is here, and he is always going on about problem gambling. As I understand it, he will support this bill.

💬 Hon Member: He’s not.

I think he will vote for it.

💬 Heather Roy: He’s disappointed.

He is disappointed, but he will vote for it. What is the point of that? I am sure all the 10,000 or so people who voted for him will be disappointed; they will want their money back.

These people are saying that some of the things are so good that they just have to go along with it, but sometimes we have to say that some of the provisions are so bad that we have to say: “No, we’re not going to do a deal.” That is what United Future could do. The Government could not go in with the Greens. Green members have made their position absolutely clear. They have let the people of New Zealand know, and they got very excited over that, particularly all the people in the pub charities industry. They all knew about it, and they would not have a bar of it. The Government had nowhere to go, and United Future was in a position where it could have forced this change, but it did not, and that is a tragedy.

Can we just move briefly to the pokie machines outside of casinos. These people have really got their act together. In particular, I would like to say that the Charitable Gaming Association has been very good with putting in place codes of practice and best practices. These people, after a lot of criticism, including, I have to say, from myself before I came into Parliament, have moved themselves to a position where they can be very proud of the work they have done. I am sure they will continue to go on to do even better work—because they are the people who actually get the money back out into the communities, into the sports clubs, and into arts groups out there, letting the little people get some of it back, and good on them for doing so, because someone has to do it.

So, in essence, this bill is a disappointment in a major way. Internet gaming is a bad, bad move, but there are other provisions that we are happy to support, and the Minister is aware of that.

I would like to outline some of the general reasons, before I get more specific, as to why we are supporting the bill. First of all, it is a consolidated approach to gaming in New Zealand rather than the mishmash of the old statutes. The bill provides opportunity for community involvement in the extent of gaming in communities, and it limits harm from gaming with the introduction of an integrated problem-gambling strategy paid for by the industry. There are limits on opportunities for under-age gambling by clearly defining the types of venues in which gambling can take place. It will reduce the number of pokie machines around the country by about 3,000. It extends the moratorium on casinos, which is in line with the public mood on the issue. However, it does increase the accountability of the non-casino gaming-machine industry markedly by ensuring clear distinctions between pub operators and donating committees of trusts. It provides for electronic monitoring of all gaming machines, allowing anyone to apply for grants, not just pub-approved groups, increased reporting requirements to the Department of Internal Affairs, and extra enforcement powers of licence conditions for the department’s compliance team. It establishes an independent gaming commission to hear disputes and to hear appeals by the industry against Department of Internal Affairs licensing decisions, and it ensures the future viability of the New Zealand Lotteries Commission.

United Future has been assailed from all sides as lacking common sense, betraying its supporters, and being anti-family because of the role it played in securing the passage through Parliament of the Gambling Bill. I just note the comments of the previous speaker, Judith Collins. She, on the one hand, privately came up to me and said that we had got a good deal and things were improving in the Gambling Bill. She then turned around last night, for example, and apparently at the eleventh hour wanted to appeal to our sensibilities to change our stand. Having not received one phone call from her, all we can conclude is that it is nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt. But that seems to be 99 percent of her warbling.

Some critics seem to be motivated by a visceral dislike of all forms of gambling, and therefore they seem to think that the Gambling Bill is all about banning the activity. Not so! The bill arose from a longstanding review of the whole industry and was designed to regulate gambling, not ban it. United Future took a pragmatic, common-sense view that we should deal with reality as it is, not what it could be.

Internet gambling, which already occurs in New Zealand, cannot be prevented without cutting New Zealand off electronically from the rest of the world. We decided that at least some of the money that now goes overseas should be retained in New Zealand and used for the benefit of the New Zealand community. In other words, money that currently fills the pockets of overseas providers of Internet gambling will, upon enactment of the bill, be a source of revenue for the gambling levy, and hence be part of a solution to gambling problems and not exacerbate the problems as they currently are. The Greens’ approach to not allow for this—and I gather from Judith Collins that it is also the National approach—would be nothing more than sticking their heads in the sand and believing that the problem does not exist.

Incidentally, it should be noted that the Lotteries Commission, not United Future, sought originally to run Internet gambling. I have to apologise for my earlier media release. My words were ill-chosen, and I accept that. What I really wanted to say was that I was happy with the provision for the Internet, simply because we could now redirect some of that money towards problem gambling, rather than allowing all that money to fill the pockets of foreigners who set up those Internet provisions. That is really what I should have said. I was not accurate, and I do apologise for giving the wrong impression in my media release.

It may suit the political purposes of the Greens to castigate United Future, but it was United Future that moved to ensure New Zealand’s problem-gambling programmes would benefit from Internet gambling. That is exactly what I am talking about. United Future has been berated for supporting the establishment of a Gaming Commission to oversee the industry, instead of letting the Ministry of Health set, collect, and spend a levy on the industry to fund problem-gambling programmes. We see the commission as independent from political interference, with transparent accounting practices and support from the industry as well as the health-care providers, in order to treat problem gambling. In other words, the Ministry of Health will be properly scrutinised with regard to both the level of the levy and the menu of options best suited to effectively treat problem gambling.

Here I have to make just a couple of points. United Future sought provisions to ensure that the commission not only was independent, but was seen to be independent, and that there was the insertion of provisions clarifying this in the Supplementary Order Paper that required the Department of Internal Affairs to ensure a clear separation of staff involving gaming and those working for the commission. This is an interesting point that has not been brought out yet, but the commission will be able to engage its own experts, which ensures that it receives independent advice.

The Green plan was to see the levy swallowed up by the health bureaucracy and distributed by anonymous Wellington-based committees with no obligation to help the communities from which the money came. For all we know, the money would go on liberating gay whales. One has only to look at tobacco taxes, which are promoted by the ministry. Only a very small proportion is spent on anti-smoking measures, and it is easy to see the danger of letting the Wellington bureaucracy get its hands on the money.

Regarding community involvement in the new gaming venues, our position has been that we provide for all sites to be set up after October 2001 to be subject to territorial authority policy approval. It would have been nice to extend it to all previously existing venues, but the fact is that existing operators have legal rights that Parliament should not be willing to legislate retrospectively over the top of, and that goes against basic constitutional convention. If one looks at pokie profit-distribution systems, our position has been against centralisation. Money raised locally should be distributed locally. Thanks to us, the Government is not forced to deal with Greens intent on centralising profits from pokies.

The fact is, love it or hate it, many aspects of New Zealand society are supported by fund-raising efforts of the private trusts that operate gaming machines. We are talking about clubs and recreational organisations, local sports clubs, emergency services, lung cancer research, arts, culture, and other philanthropic purposes, church-based social services, capital works and building projects for the churches themselves, community urban rejuvenation projects such as park restoration, inner-city beautification, and so on.

I am happy for my colleagues and I to be judged over the term of this Parliament, and we proudly stand on our record for our actions in promoting the Families Commission, for influencing Labour in a more common-sense direction in its social policies, agitating for better tax policies that benefit New Zealand businesses and families, battling against the spread of prostitution and drug-taking in our communities, promoting victims’ rights, and so on, and especially for our contribution to a stable Government, working with Labour in a constructive and professional manner.

Finally, I express my thanks to the Minister, George Hawkins, for the reasonableness and openness with which we negotiated this bill and its finer points.

I wish to make a personal explanation under Standing Order 343. I believe that my honour was impugned by the previous speaker. When I spoke to the previous speaker, I certainly did congratulate United Future on some of the changes it had been able to bring forward in this bill, and I have made it perfectly plain to the House that I was very pleased with some of the changes in the bill. I certainly have not ever said that I congratulated them on letting Internet gambling come into this country.

The aim of the Gambling Bill—formerly the Responsible Gambling Bill—is to reform the law relating to gambling in New Zealand by repealing and replacing the Gaming and Lotteries Act and the Casino Control Act. Although this Government may trumpet other objectives, the reality is that the bill will have serious consequences for sports, cultural, and service organisations. The potential for political patronage is a real concern. Alterations to the distribution process may well be called for, but the proposals, subject to political appointment and pressures, will not meet community needs, and will not reflect the interests of particular communities. There is potential for further behaviour modifications by the politically correct brigade in the Labour Party. As well as jeopardising the flow of grants to community groups, it is likely that the dramatic increases in levies and administrative costs will further reduce the pool of available funds.

The Government issued a 65-page Supplementary Order Paper of amendments to the bill a couple of days before the bill was considered in the Committee stage. Those amendments were not available for public submissions, and, what is more, that Supplementary Order Paper 132 made changes against the recommendations of the select committee that considered the bill and the public submissions. Today the third and final reading of the bill is being rushed through the House so that the public and other affected parties cannot possibly have time to consider the changes and make comments on them. New Zealand First views that practice, which is becoming common with this Government, as appalling and undemocratic.

The Supplementary Order Paper contains many detailed technical proposals and amendments, and some of the more important amendments are as follows. One is the prohibition on the granting of any further casino licences, in clause 8A. Another is the removal of the clause that prevents the setting up of Internet gambling. That is against the express recommendations of the select committee, and is done with the approval of United Future. It had the opportunity to shut that down, but, no, it approved it. The dangers of Internet gambling are very complex and enormous. Internet gambling takes away the security and the support of the casinos and parlours that run casino machines, but does not protect the individual operating on the Internet. The Internet leaves it wide open; there are no checks and balances, and no way to stop people from operating. Unless some changes are brought in very shortly, we will find Internet gambling running amok. It is an easy way to gamble, to spend money, and to run up huge debts.

The Supplementary Order Paper allows the New Zealand Racing Board to operate racing and sports betting, conducted under the Racing Act, in a casino. New Zealand First supports any issues that put the racing industry back on an even keel and an even playing field.

There is a definition of housie, but the legislation does not provide rules or restrictions on practices carried out under housie. Neither the bill nor the Supplementary Order Paper addresses the tremendous number of rorts and schemes to get round the so-called limits on housie fund distributions.

Schedule 1 adds conditions that must be attached to a casino licence. As one member asked the other night, what on earth do salary arrangements have to do with a casino licence? That is nothing more than the politically correct brigade within the Labour Party influencing the operations of a casino. Salary arrangements have no place in the licence.

The Minister of Internal Affairs has a huge influence. He is able to move the presiding member of the board just by supplying a written notice to the person then sending a copy to the board, without any explanations and without any recourse laid out in the bill. Under clause 87, the Minister has discretion to permit more than nine gaming machines at nine machine venues. The Minister has touted that this bill limits the number of gaming machines, and will limit the number of gaming machines in new venues to nine, yet this clause allows the Minister discretion to increase that number. So pressure from corporate societies that are supportive of the Government will result in those societies receiving preferential treatment under this clause. This clause also allows the Minister discretion to increase the number of machines in venues that support the Government. That is political interference. This bill leaves things wide open to abuse and political favouritism. One can only ask about United Future’s accountability under this bill. It has agreed to this clause and will, obviously, ask the Minister to allow societies that are supportive of United Future to increase the number of machines in their operation.

Local territorial authorities have the ability to control activities in their areas only up until they issue a licence. Once a licence is issued, they no longer have control over what happens, and if they suddenly discover that gambling is out of control and harming their community, they cannot do anything about it.

I would like to mention that New Zealand First believes that the racing industry has not been on a level footing with the gambling industry for a long, long time, and we support any clauses that bring racing back to a level playing field. New Zealand First views the racing industry as a hugely important industry for New Zealand, particularly for New Zealand’s economy and exports.

I would like to acknowledge the Minister’s willingness to provide members of New Zealand First with a briefing with officials. It was greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, it was at such a late stage that, after careful consideration, we found we still could not support a number of the clauses within the bill. Therefore, we are voting against the bill.

Finally, I would like to add that those who claim to have that elusive thing called common sense probably do not.

At the Third International Conference on Gambling in New Zealand being held in Auckland today, the Hon Damien O’Connor addressed participants by saying: “Problem gambling is a destructive addiction. There is widespread evidence of the harm that problem gambling is causing society. There has been a dramatic increase in problem gambling, especially pokie machines. The figures paint a bleak figure of problem gambling in New Zealand, and there is a higher concentration of pokies coinciding with areas of high deprivation.” I say to Mr O’Connor: “How true!”. How can a Labour Minister go in front of an international conference of people who really know, in the deepest possible way, about the downside of the gambling industry, and acknowledge those obvious facts, when just a few hours later in the House his Government, with the help of United Future, is intent on passing a bill that now has clauses in it that assist the promotion of problem gambling rather than minimising it?

At 4 o’clock this afternoon, that same conference in Auckland passed a resolution stating, in part, that it “expresses its alarm at the most recent changes in the Gambling Bill and calls on the Government and all parties represented in Parliament” to reject the late United Future and Labour additions to the bill, and to support initiatives to allow local authority control over gaming venues, community distribution of pokie proceeds, and obliging Government to report annually on its overall income from, and dependency on, gambling proceeds. Although I report that resolution to the House because I think that if anyone’s voice should be heard on this bill, it is the voice of those who work daily with the people whose lives are wrecked by the havoc that problem gambling causes, I have little hope that at this late stage Labour or United Future members will be willing to change their minds, despite the embarrassment that their position has caused them.

Labour has come a very long way from its early discussions with the Alliance and the Green Party in the last Government, when I think all of us saw hope that the bill we are dealing with today would be a truly responsible Gambling Bill. It was even called the Responsible Gambling Bill throughout most of its history; the fact that the Government Administration Committee chose at the last minute to delete the word “Responsible” from the title was indeed a prophetic indication of what was to come.

I am one of the few MPs now in the House who sat through the entire select committee process on the bill. After months of submissions and consideration, the committee in its wisdom decided to keep the clause that banned Internet and remote interactive gambling, because of the evidence we had heard of its deleterious effect. Then, just days before the bill came back to the House for its Committee stage, a Government Supplementary Order Paper turned up, as a result of a deal cut with United Future, that reversed the select committee’s decision and allowed the Lotteries Commission—that is, the Government—to proceed with one of the most pernicious forms of gambling available in the modern world. As Dave Macpherson, the spokesperson for the community group GamblingWatch, said earlier this week: “Internet gambling is to entertainment what Internet pornography is to sex.” As with pornography, all around the world treatment agencies and Governments are concerned about the high rate of under-age access to gambling opportunities over the Net. Studies have shown that we already have a high rate of problem gambling among children and young people, and I find it simply incredible that United Future and Labour have agreed not only to refuse to regulate against Internet gaming, but also to promote it through what has become a most irresponsible bill.

On top of that, the Government and United Future in their wisdom have chosen to reject the decision of the select committee—which, of course, did include a number of Labour MPs at the time, strangely enough—to ban banknote acceptors from gaming machines. That was done after we had heard evidence of the way in which banknote acceptors make it that much easier for addicted gamblers just to keep on going without having to get up from the machine for even the shortest of breaks. Pokie machines are now undeniably the source of most new gambling addictions in this country and are responsible for a rising rate of problems, particularly among women. The select committee felt that anything we could do to slow the deliberately seductive way in which the pokies keep people playing was undeniably a good thing. However, United Future was not on the select committee during the last Parliament, and it decided not to listen to this sound advice. Labour also decided not to listen to it. They thought the idea of slowing addiction rates was not even worth bothering about. So again we are in the disgraceful situation where a bill that was supposed to be about harm minimisation has ended up being, at least in part, about harm maximisation.

The third part of the Labour - United Future deal has seen the gambling industry itself being given a greater voice, and hence influence, in the process of setting the problem-gambling strategy and levy. Those are the people and organisations actually responsible for the problem in the first place, and to give them a larger say is a dereliction of conscience and of common sense. The gaming industry also has, of course, a massive vested interest in keeping the problem-gambling levy as low as possible, and throughout the select committee process its representatives made many arguments suggesting that the scale of the problem was exaggerated and the costs of dealing with it overrated. On the whole, the sector is also keen to keep problem-gambling strategies focused on treatment rather than on the additional public health goals of health promotion and harm minimisation. Labour and United Future are entering very dangerous territory here. In fact, this last issue is the most substantial and retrogressive of the changes engendered by their amendments to the bill.

For the last 9 months or so the Green Party has been working with church organisations, community groups, and local government to try to bring about several critical and positive changes to the bill. We have fought a long, hard struggle to try to persuade Labour, firstly, to allow local authorities to have control over all, not just a few, pokie venues and numbers in their districts, and, secondly, to change the pokie profit distribution system to one that is equitable and publicly accountable. On the first of these—local government control—we have done a lot of research and discovered that, in fact, not one territorial local authority will have the ability to control more than 30 percent of the pokies in its district and that 15 councils nationwide will have no say over any of them, because they were licensed before the magical date of October 2001. In George Hawkins’ own backyard, Manukau City, there has been an explosion of gambling, exacerbated by the conscious choice of Pub Charity to site its machines in the areas where the poorest people live. The Mayor of Manukau, Sir Barry Curtis, and his council have fought a valiant battle, along with many other local body representatives, to try to get the Government to change its mind on this, but to no avail.

On the second of the two issues, distribution, the Green Party has been subject to much deliberate misinformation about our policy. As anyone who read our Supplementary Order Paper or listened to anything I have been saying over the last year will know, what we are after is not some centralised bureaucracy, with no local control over where the $200 million in pokie profit goes, but, rather, a carefully balanced system between national and local needs that is aimed at sharing the proceeds fairly between sports and recreation, arts and culture, and broader community purposes. In our model, fully two-thirds of the funding would have been distributed by a range of very local committees. However, all of this was not to be. As I have said before this week, Labour has completely disgraced itself by choosing to go with United Future on this bill.

Contrary to the misconceptions that some MPs have deliberately promulgated lately, the Green Party has never stopped being willing to negotiate with Labour on the changes we wanted made. We have always been willing to talk, negotiate, and compromise, right up until the last minute. We have never, to quote what Matt Robson said the other day, “thrown our toys out of the cot” on this issue. It is just a myth. We did keep trying. Late on Monday this week, when we had nearly given up hope of changing Labour’s mind, we were made aware of the last-minute unanimous resolution of the New Zealand Council of the Labour Party this past weekend to ask its own caucus to reverse the deal with United Future, and to support local government control and publicly accountable distribution systems. I know that there are many people in the Labour caucus who actually do support their own party’s representative body in its feelings on this issue. I am just sorry that they could not persuade their colleagues on Tuesday that it might be more important to honour that part of Labour’s heritage that calls for social and economic justice for all of our people, rather than the part that sold out its members in the 1980s.

History is starting to repeat itself for the Labour Party, and I hope its MPs do some serious thinking about what has been happening over the last couple of weeks. Whose votes does Labour want in 2005? Are they those of the pokie proprietors and the Pub Charity administrators, or those of the people whose lives have been devastated by problem gambling? Which party would those MPs rather work with for a better future for New Zealand—one that will not support a jot of industrial relations or other progressive legislation, or one that shares the vision of that part of Labour that does want a better future for all its people, not just those who already have money and power?

It has been a long and tortuous route for this bill. It started off a long while ago, with the first reading in about April 2002, and there has been toing and froing between the parties, with deals done here and parties pulling out there, since then. I congratulate the Green Party on the principled stand it has taken on this bill. It realised that there were significant difficulties with regard to the bill, and its members at least had the fortitude to stand up and say that the bill was not right. I do not agree with all the reasons that they have done that, but at least they have had the fortitude to do so—unlike United Future, which stepped into the breach.

As a result of that, we are to have many things that, I think, are retrograde steps for this country. We are to have Internet gambling, interactive gambling—

💬 Hon George Hawkins: We already have it.

We are to have a lot more of it—online casinos. I notice in the bill that there will be no more physical casinos, despite the experience in Rotorua that my honourable colleague Georgina te Heuheu told us about on Tuesday, whereby the casino planned for that city missed out on coming into being by one day.

I thought that the United Future member Marc Alexander gave a very anguished and defensive speech. He obviously feels that there are some difficulties with regard to the provisions of the bill in areas that he does not want to support, yet the United Future party is going to continue to support it. I urge the United Future members, when they vote, to consider doing what the Greens have done in their principled stand. It is not too late for the United Future members to say that they do not agree with many of the provisions in the bill.

ACT New Zealand opposes the bill for many reasons. It is interesting to note that the bill started its life as the “Responsible Gambling Bill’. The dropping of the word “responsible” from the title is, I think, an admission that there is little responsibility involved with regard to this bill. I could point to many clauses where that point is relevant, and I will perhaps mention them as I go through my speech.

The Supplementary Order Paper is a disgrace. I refer to Supplementary Order Paper 132 put forward in the name of the Hon George Hawkins, the Minister of Internal Affairs. That Supplementary Order Paper is huge, containing 65 pages of amendments to this bill. We heard from Sue Bradford that the Government Administration Committee spent a long time on the bill, and had many, many hours of discussion about amending bits here and there in the bill to make it better. Then, at the last minute, a Supplementary Order Paper came forward from the Minister with a huge number of amendments. Those amendments had had no scrutiny by members on the Opposition side of the House, who had many valid concerns about them. The Supplementary Order Paper overturned many painstaking decisions that had been made at the select committee level. Worst of all, it had no scrutiny from the public. There was no ability for the public to put forward submissions and to have their say, which is what our process is all about.

I recently spoke at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in the Cook Islands. I was asked to give a presentation on the New Zealand select committee process. The other delegates there were very impressed with our select committee process—the number of select committees we have, the way we organise the readings of a bill, and the amount of public submission that we have. Supplementary Order Paper 132 makes a farce of the system of democracy that we have in this country, where the public are able to make submissions. That is one of the things that the delegates from around the Commonwealth were very impressed with—the amount of scrutiny we had—but there was no scrutiny of that Supplementary Order Paper. Many of the amendments that we see in this legislation now are there without any scrutiny, at all. They just show that the Government decided to say that it knows what is best for this country, and to tell people how to run their lives—particularly, in this case, in relation to gambling.

I come back to the online casinos. I think it is a very important point that interactive Internet gambling will proliferate. It will make the problems with gambling much worse. Once upon a time people had to get dressed and go down the road to find pokie machines, or go to the local casino. Now the temptation to gamble is there all the time in their homes, if they want it to be. I suspect that the 3 percent, 6 percent, or 9 percent—the escalating number that we heard about from Judith Collins—of problem gamblers that we see in this country is set to escalate even further, because of Internet gambling. Who do we have to thank for that? We can thank the Labour Government, supported by the United Future party.

I would like to come to the new structure proposed in the bill, with the Gambling Commission. The commission’s structure sits at the head of the other structures. It is responsible for appeals and limited licensing. The Gambling Commission, it should be noted, will have no teeth, and will not be independent. If we need anything, it is to have a transparent process and an independent body heading up the gambling process. Underneath the Gambling Commission will sit the Department of Internal Affairs. Whereas once upon a time there was a vertical structure, so that an organisation reported to those above it, now the Department of Internal Affairs will have a horizontal structure. We will have policy for all gaming evolved there, and enforcement will also be the role of the Department of Internal Affairs. The licensing and regulation of gaming machines, servicing of the Gaming Commission, and servicing of the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board will all be parked there. There is not a lot of transparency here. In particular, the licensing and regulation of gaming machines and the servicing of the Gambling Commission should be part of the Gambling Commission, in order for transparency to exist.

The New Zealand Future member Brent Catchpole—

💬 Peter Brown: New Zealand First.

Sorry—New Zealand First. I do beg the member’s pardon; that was a Freudian slip. The New Zealand First member mentioned the huge amount of ministerial control that exists under this legislation. It is indicative of what is happening in a lot of the legislation that we see now. The bill that we debated prior to this one, the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill, also saw an awful lot of ministerial control. What we do not want to see is the power of the Minister to increase the number of gaming machines at some venues. Why is it the sole responsibility of the Minister to decide which venue should be allowed to have more than the allotted nine gaming machines? There is no reason for that, at all. That system is open to abuse, and it allows the Government to pick its favourites—something that we are seeing more and more as this Government’s term progresses. That, too, is another reason that the word “responsible” has been dropped from the title of this bill. What responsibility exists when one person has the power to do those things? It is just not right, at all.

For many reasons, ACT New Zealand opposes this bill. Most of all, we are worried about the ministerial control, and also about the new structure that does exist. But the potential for the huge proliferation of online casinos, Internet gambling, and interactive gambling, which the United Future Party needs to take a great deal of responsibility for, has been a huge disappointment with this bill.

I speak as the chair of the Government Administration Committee. Throughout two Parliaments we have had two select committees work on this bill, and I thank those committees for the work they have done. I thank the officials, and in particular John Markland, for the work they have done on the bill, and for being so long-suffering over what have been very controversial issues, on which many people will never agree.

The bill does some very important things. It limits the number of pokie machines in this country, it gives local government the ability to have gambling plans, it does make trusts more accountable by addressing their structure, and it does address the distribution of profits by making that process more transparent and, can I say, much more fair.

I am pleased to rise to the third reading of the Gambling Bill. At the outset I say, as my colleague Judith Collins did, that National opposes this bill.

I commend the ACT speaker, and the Greens’ speaker, Sue Bradford, who spoke before me. I do not normally necessarily agree with the position that the Greens take, but I have to say that their stand—unlike that of United Future—has been completely principled, and in that respect I certainly support them.

I take the opportunity to discuss, for the last time, the issue of Rotorua Casino Ltd. Supplementary Order Paper 109, which I lodged, sought to enable Rotorua Casino Ltd to apply for, and have considered, a casino venue licence. That amendment would have allowed genuine consultation with the Rotorua community on a proposal to build and open a resort casino in Rotorua, and would have provided for an independent assessment of the application, community consultation, and the distribution of the profits by a charitable trust.

The background is that Rotorua Casino Ltd viewed as a serious injustice the moratorium on further casino applications that was imposed by Parliament in 1997. The moratorium prevented two of the six applications that had been lodged before the passing of that bill from proceeding. Of course, one of those was from Rotorua Casino Ltd. The other was from a company that, at its base, was the Wellington Tenths. It is interesting that both those organisations were Māori based, but I will say no more on that; given that all people in this country say they want to see Māori involved in economic development, it is interesting that the two organisations that missed out were Māori based.

Rotorua Casino Ltd sought to rectify that. At the time that the moratorium was imposed, it was generally understood that the purpose of the imposition was to allow a complete review of gaming laws, and the expectation was that casino applications would then be heard under the new rules. Of course, we know that this bill has completely barred them. That decision might not have been so bad if there had been some logic behind it, but if one looks at the bill, one sees that one of the most pernicious forms of gambling will be allowed to spread right across this country, so there does not seem to be any logic at all to the Government’s approach to gambling.

Rotorua Casino Ltd wanted the opportunity, as it had already invested so many resources and funds in 1997, to have an application considered. But it recognised that it would need to meet more stringent and comprehensive conditions had been faced previously by other applicants for casino premises licences, and that is what it did. As embodied by the proposal in the Supplementary Order Paper, Rotorua Casino Ltd had taken a very responsible approach to the issue, and had taken into account a lot of the comments that had been made at the time of the 1997 legislation.

One of the side effects of the moratorium has been to create a casino monopoly in New Zealand, and substantial market dominance by one company throughout the country. This bill confirms and makes permanent that private business monopoly, and that surely cuts rights across the business and competition policies that all Governments—particularly National and centre-right Governments—have. I would have thought that this Government, in particular, as it seems to have all the language about business and enterprise—although it does not actually deliver on it—would see the sense in that, as well, but, clearly, it did not. Essentially, sitting behind the Rotorua Casino Ltd application were two fundamental issues. One was the right of communities to decide their own economic development, to make decisions around what activities they see as enhancing economic growth and development in their own regions, and the other was the injustice that had occurred with the moratorium in 1997.

I want to spend a short time on some of the things that the Minister of Internal Affairs said the other night. On the issue of casinos and the fact that no more will be allowed, he shouted out in the Chamber that the public does not like casinos. Well, I ask who the public is, because it seems that the public is the Labour Government—that that is who the public is. I imagine that those people who do not like casinos are not too crash hot in favour of any form of gambling, anyway.

That was such a stupid thing for him to say, when this bill will see the spread of interactive gambling in any event. It will be worse. This legislation makes provision for a form of gambling that will be much worse than anything that the Minister talked about the other night. That is why I say there is no logic to this bill, and that is a great pity. After a 4-year gap, this House should have seen a decent piece of legislation that was comprehensive and consistent, but this bill is not. It is not consistent at all. Government members make great noise about the fact that they are limiting the number of pokie machines and preventing further casinos, but, on the other hand, the State will now sponsor Internet and remote interactive gambling. I ask what the sense in that is. [Interruption] I want Dianne Yates, a member from Hamilton, to stand up and tell me the logic behind that, because there is none. This way, people do not have to get up and go out of their sitting rooms; they can sit there and gamble. How come that is OK and casinos are not? Members should tell me that. They should tell me how come that is OK. Well, it is not.

The Government should be ashamed of itself, especially a Government that says it is family-based and all those things. However, that is just a lot of rubbish. I deplore this legislation and the way that this Government has behaved on it.

This is a good bill and I support it.

I support the bill.

I missed both those speeches in my effort to stand up; they were so quick. I want to acknowledge from the outset that there are elements in this bill that New Zealand First thinks will improve the current situation. Indeed, we would have supported them at the Committee stage, had the debate been allowed in such a way that we could have voted on individual clauses. But it was a constrained debate on a part-by-part basis and very much rushed through, and overall we had to oppose it.

New Zealand First was not on the select committee, so we had to come to terms with the bill by doing what might be termed “the hard yards”. We had to read it in its entirety, we had to study the submissions as best we could, and we had to listen to the debate in this House. We note that the select committee received 521 submissions, the hearing of evidence took 33 hours and 48 minutes, and a further 34 hours and 18 minutes were spent in consideration. We were not there—and it is a very difficult job to keep up with that level of work—but what surprises me is neither was United Future. It was not even in the House in any effective manner in the last term of Parliament, and it did not have anybody on this select committee, at all. I ask the chief whip of United Future: “Did you read the submissions?”.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Did the “member” read the submissions.

Did the member read the submissions? Did anybody in United Future read the submissions? He does not know. I think members can take that as being that nobody in United Future has read the submissions.

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: Would it have made any difference if they had?

I do not know, but we have good reason to believe that nobody in United Future read the submissions, and nobody in United Future can address this House now and answer that question in a positive manner. United Future members have come to this Parliament and supported a Supplementary Order Paper that removes clause 217A from the bill as it was reported back from the select committee. Clause 217A banned interactive gambling. United Future has done a deal with the Labour Party to remove that clause. Its members have not listened to anybody, read any submissions, or done anything in the public arena whatsoever, but they know better than anybody else.

A few weeks ago, my Death with Dignity Bill was defeated, and a United Future member—I will not name him, because I get on very well with him personally and respect his view—came over to me said he respected my sincerity, but the Lord had spoken and my bill had been defeated. I ask United Future members whether the Lord spoke when the Prostitution Reform Bill was passed.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: There has been one reference to your bill, but now we will come back to the Gambling Bill.

Do they believe that the Lord is speaking to them, so that they do not have to ask the public what they think of interactive gambling?

In Australia, the National Office for the Information Economy—whatever that is—has compiled a report for the Australians. I want to read some of the assertions made in that report: “The key social concerns that have emerged in the debate on interactive gambling are as follows: 1. Internet gambling will greatly increase the accessibility of gambling. Research shows a significant relationship between accessibility and the prevalence of problem gambling. 2. The special attributes of interactive gambling, such as its ease of use and the type of products available, may exacerbate the prevalence of problem gambling. 3. Interactive gambling will expose new audiences, such as young people, to gambling, thereby increasing the potential for an overall increase in problem gambling. 4. Early intervention and support to problem gamblers may be more difficult to provide by the Internet than in current gambling venues. 5. Interactive gambling may have a further negative impact on the community through the narrowing of leisure choices and an increased gambling mentality, with wider acceptance of gambling and the potential for increased isolation of individuals.”

The report goes on to state in a bullet-point form—which I will read to this House—key points why the Commonwealth of Australia is concerned about interactive gambling: “1. Interactive technology provides an unprecedented level of access to gambling, bringing gambling into the homes of Australian families. 2. Young people may be directly affected by increased accessibility to gambling. 3. Accessibility to gambling is the single largest factor contributing to problem gambling. 4. Australia already has one of the largest gambling industries in the world. 5. As a nation of early adopters of new technology and conducting transactions on-line, Australia is a prime location for a rapid expansion of interactive gambling. 6. New interactive technology could attract new cohorts of gamblers and result in new problem gamblers and forms of problem gambling.”

The Australians have seen fit to examine this issue in detail. What are we doing here? We are having little meetings behind the scenes in non – smoke-filled rooms, with a Government that opposed interactive gambling when the bill was sent back from the select committee. I say that United Future members should be ashamed of themselves. They should be absolutely hanging their heads in shame.

I know that Larry Baldock—he winks at me across the House—is going to address a church on Sunday. I want him to stand up and tell them—I will come along; the member invites me to come along, and so I will. I think that what United Future is doing in this country is not only shameful, but not even democratic. This is the party that stands for common sense. Its members say that they are the common-sense party. Matt Robson nods his head. Is it common sense to deny the public any representations on this sort of legislation? I know that Mr Robson is concerned about problem gambling in this country, and I say to him that this is not the way to go. We should not do a back-room deal after all the select committee’s deliberations and considerations said no to interactive gambling.

Hon Georgina te Heuheu: Is he voting for this bill?

I do not know; we will hear that at the end, though I cannot imagine he will. When Marc Alexander spoke in this House, he said he had not had anybody appeal to him over the phone not to vote for this bill. I have tried to ring him in the House, and could not, but I have spoken to him personally and appealed to him, and to other United Future members, not to vote for this bill—not with the clause in it that provides for interactive gambling. If they vote for it, they will be doing a disservice to young people, and a huge disservice to the families in this country. They will never be able to stand up on a public platform—and certainly not with me alongside them—and say that they are the family party in this country, because they sure ain’t.

Peter Brown and I share a regard for common sense, but we also share a belief in the wise words of the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who said that common sense is often just shared prejudice. I am sure that Peter Brown and I have often talked about that.

The Progressive Coalition is supporting the bill, though we do not have as much to celebrate in the battle against problem gambling as we ought to, given our absolute majority on the centre-left. Progressive’s position is perhaps best summarised by Richard Northey, a former member of Parliament and now chair of the Problem Gambling Foundation. He says that the bill before us represents eight steps forward, because it provides a tougher regime to control gambling than the present law of this land. That is why the Progressive Coalition supports the bill. We do not believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The Greens walked away because they were not getting everything they wanted, and have now vowed to bring the bill down altogether. They would rather that the eight steps forward being made here today were not being made at all, just so that they can have the emotional satisfaction of putting out a press statement accusing Labour of being arrogant. Sue Bradford talked in this House yesterday of the arrogance of Labour—a party that won over 41 percent of the vote last election, which is two times more than any other single party. Yet when the Greens walk out on negotiations with Labour, Labour and the Progressive Coalition have no choice but to find at least one other Opposition party to allow us to enact legislation that, in Richard Northey’s words, allows us to take the eight steps forward that we would not otherwise be able to take. In other words, to take eight steps forward on problem gambling—as we are—we have had to turn to a conservative party, which in this case is United Future.

“Arrogant” means having or showing an exaggerated opinion of one’s own merit or ability, and I know that Mr English would agree with that. Surely, the test of any party’s merit or ability is the success it has in getting its policies enacted, and in representing the people who voted for it. However, I thank the Greens for voting for the Progressive Coalition’s Supplementary Order Paper on cutting and capping the numbers of pokie machines. We in the Progressive Coalition also reject banknote acceptors, which make it easier for problem gamblers to throw their families’ dollar notes into gaming machines, and we thank the Greens for supporting us on that.

But, again, we wonder how United Future will justify its stance on gambling, when it is supposed to be pro-family. I also note that United Future does not support the Progressive Coalition’s pro-family 4 weeks’ minimum annual leave bill; apparently, the only families United Future wishes to strengthen are rich families.

Standing Orders do not permit me to introduce a member’s bill to reform gambling laws this year, but from next year I will put forward a member’s bill on behalf of the Progressive Coalition that really will be pro-family and do more to protect families from problem gambling.