Gambling Amendment Bill

I am pleased to rise in support of the bill.

I thank the Minister, George Hawkins, for taking the trouble to refer to the discussions that took place with the Waitakere Licensing Trust, the Portage Licensing Trust, and myself from New Zealand First, and to clarify the misunderstanding that had arisen. The matter has also been touched on by the National Party spokesperson for this issue, Lindsay Tisch. New Zealand First will support the Gambling Amendment Bill going to the select committee. I think the bill is a very good move. I was contacted with a view to trying to assist in expediting things under the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4), but I note that that bill still languishes at No. 22 on the Order Paper. It is more than likely, the way the Order Paper is working at the moment, that this bill may come back to the House and be passed, at least simultaneously with the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). The move on the Minister’s part is a very good one, and it should help to get this matter dealt with expeditiously.

As far as the principle is concerned, I want to see that the money gathered in the Waitakere Licensing Trust and Portage Licensing Trust areas is spent there. I was contacted by Edwin Perry, who takes a close interest in issues in the Wairarapa, where he is based, and he drew to my attention the problem that the Masterton Licensing Trust was experiencing. A person there had contacted Edwin Perry about what appeared to be a delay, but I think the Minister has clarified that issue now.

💬 Georgina Beyer: After hearing from me, it appears.

One always takes credit for every little morsel, especially when one is a constituency member. I know that there is nothing like being a constituency member, having been one for 9 years. Anything that happens in the area has to have been achieved by the constituency member, even if he or she has only just heard about it.

💬 Georgina Beyer: With great help from New Zealand First. [Interruption]

I take the point being raised by those constituency members.

In supporting the Gambling Amendment Bill, I do so very cautiously. I have my own history on the issue of gambling. Way back in, I think, about 1983, Sir Robert Muldoon was looking to introduce Lotto. Three members were put on a select committee: Robin Gray, myself, and Pat Hunt. Sir Robert Muldoon chose the committee extremely well, because there was a 2 to 1 vote against going ahead with Lotto. I was one of the two; I am a conservative on gambling issues. Subsequently, Lotto was brought in by the Labour Government. Then we had casinos, and the rest is history.

The money that is now being spent on gambling has created all sorts of problems, and I am concerned that in speaking on a gambling bill, the public should not get the impression from me that such bills are being passed without any regard whatsoever for what is happening out in the community. I note the little message we received from GamblingWatch, dated 14 December 2004, that referred to total gambling losses. It stated that although pokies have been legal in New Zealand for only 15 years, they now account for 51 percent of gambling losses. Casinos have been here for only 11 years and they account for a further 24 percent, most of which also goes on pokies. Gambling is a big problem in New Zealand. One would expect the licensing trusts to do more than anyone else to try to keep it under control. That is why New Zealand First will support this bill. The licensing trusts have duly elected members who are responsible to their community not only, I suggest, for the collection of the money and its distribution but also for the effect that that type of expenditure has on their community.

In the days when we were looking at this matter in 1980 and 1981, Sir Robert Muldoon was a great supporter of the New Zealand racing industry, and he wanted to make sure that it stayed alive and well. He was always concerned about the possibility that the spending of money in other areas of gambling would have a detrimental effect on the racing industry. New Zealand First, for perhaps much the same reason, is always concerned to ensure that the racing industry continues. I do not bet on the races. I perhaps take the occasional Melbourne Cup ticket. I do not even know the correct number of the horse I am betting on sometimes. But I now spend a little bit of money on Lotto, ironically. I always lose at the end of the day; I can see that. If we look at the expenditure on gambling, we see that in 1980, for example, there was a total expenditure of $118 million. Now, the expenditure on gambling in 2004 is $2.039 billion. That does not take into account the turnover on racing.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

In order to refresh people’s memories, I say to members that the Gambling Amendment Bill, according to the explanatory note of the bill: “… amends the principal Act to exempt licensing trust members and trustees of community trusts (who are the equivalent of licensing trust members where the licensing trust has reconstituted as a community trust under the Sale of Liquor Act 1989) from the definition of key person in section 4(1) of the principal Act in relation to a class 4 venue. This has the effect of excluding those members and trustees from the provisions of the principal Act that require the separation of functions and will enable them to be involved in decisions about the operation of gaming machines and the distribution of gaming machine proceeds.” New Zealand First supports this bill, and as a member with interests in the west Auckland area—I am concerned with the Waitakere Licensing Trust and the Portage Licensing Trust—I am only too pleased to facilitate the passing of this bill. As I mentioned, there was a suggestion that this legislation should be contained in the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4), but I see that that bill is still down at the bottom of the Order Paper, in 22nd place. So I commend the Minister for bringing this bill into the House, because it is likely to be passed before the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) is passed.

I have one concern about the bill, which perhaps needs to be clarified. I understand that some licensing trusts are entitled to operate outside a licensing trust area. The concern that has been expressed is that that may extend the right of a licensing trust to be engaged in gambling activities outside its licensing trust area. That is a matter that I expect the select committee will be considering, as it affects this bill.

Before the House rose for lunch, I also mentioned that a colossal amount is being spent on gambling now—$2.039 billion, as opposed to $118 million in 1980—which takes us to the issue of the effect of gambling on the community. I was pleased to see the press release by the Department of Internal Affairs on 14 December, which was Tuesday. Of course, today is still Tuesday as far as this House is concerned, because we are in urgency and are being forced to stay in this House, by virtue of a resolution supported by the Government and United Future, to proceed with bills that should have been dealt with last week. But the Prime Minister had to have her way last week, and we did something else instead of looking at these many measures. The press release that I have referred to is important, because it concerns the harm that is caused by gambling. The press release focuses on new rules for preventing and minimising the harm caused by gambling, and summarises some of the research on which those rules are based. Although New Zealand First supports this measure, it is concerned about how much is being spent on gambling, and it is concerned about what is being done to prevent the harm caused by gambling.

One aspect of gambling that few people are aware of is that about one in five New Zealanders who regularly gamble on gaming machines have a gambling problem. The rates overseas, apparently, are similar or even worse. In a newsletter, the director of the Gambling Research Centre at Auckland University of Technology, Professor Max Abbott, summarised the 1999 research that led to the review. The research showed that the risk of problem gambling is highest with gaming machines, and the risk is just as high whether the machines are in casinos, pubs, or clubs. So in supporting this legislation for the Waitakere Licensing Trust, the Portage Licensing Trust, and licensing trusts generally, I wish to remind trust members that as elected representatives of the people they have an obligation to run their trusts well. In the context of licensing trusts especially, and in considering their history of being started up and supported by the community for the community, we want to see them benefit their communities.

I rise to speak to this first reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill. ACT New Zealand will support this bill going to the select committee, but we are disappointed to see yet another bill being debated under urgency to rectify legislation that really has only just come into place. We spent a long time debating the Gambling Bill in 2003, when it was passed. It came into force on 1 July 2004 and now, just a few short months down the track, we are racing yet another amendment bill through Parliament just before the Christmas break.

As I said, ACT will support this measure going to the select committee in order to hear the arguments and public submissions, but we are very disappointed that, as several members of other parties have said, this legislation was first proposed to be part of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). The letter that came from the Minister of Internal Affairs was very brief and gave very little away as to the reasons this measure was to be put into place. For my part, I answered the letter on behalf of the ACT party by saying that presumably the Government did have reasons for a law change that it thought were sound but that the letter did not indicate what those were. So there we were, just meant to take in blind faith that the measure was the right thing to do. In my response to the Minister, I invited the officials to come and meet with me, and I asked for all papers on this matter that showed both the pros and cons as to why liquor and gambling should be mixed, as the Minister was proposing. I said I would be perfectly happy to revisit the measure if that evidence was put forward to us. I am not quite sure what has gone on here. Either the Minister is not very keen on the measure, or perhaps the officials are not, but nothing has been forthcoming.

I must say that I was disturbed by the number of organisations, particularly licensing trusts in the community, that contacted my office and asked for an appointment. I met with some of their representatives, who told me that ACT was the only party opposing the statutes amendment measure, but here today, debating it in urgency, I find that other parties have exactly the same story to tell. They have been approached, told they were the only ones opposing the matter, and completely misled—

💬 Hon Member: What other parties?

Apparently New Zealand First was told it was the only party opposing the matter. I had no idea that the National Party had also been told that, but a member made a very strong speech today saying it had. I understand that the Green Party was also told it was the only party not supporting it. Anyway, that is by the by. Things have turned out exactly as they should, but it is disappointing that we have this amendment bill so shortly after the core legislation has been passed.

Like Mr Dail Jones, I too have several questions for the Minister. Mr Jones said that his questions were around the amount of money being spent on gambling. Mine are of a much more fundamental nature. I would like to hear from the Government just why it thinks that liquor provisions and gambling provisions should be mixed. It is not clear to me why that should be the case, although it would seem that in many cases the licensing trusts that operate in very small communities might well have the bulk of expertise in both areas, so perhaps there are good reasons for that. But those reasons certainly have not been put forward by the Government and promoted in any positive sort of way.

The licensing trusts themselves are obviously very keen on this measure. It is important to look back on the history, slightly. Licensing trust members are elected under the Sale of Liquor Act, and their role is to operate businesses in the hospitality industry. Licensing trusts, as we have heard, are not eligible to operate gaming machines under the Gambling Act, and the Government is obviously admitting now that there was an oversight when that Act was passed. So this bill has been put forward to try to rectify that matter. It is important to remember that there may well be some conflict of interest with licensing trust members making decisions about the provision and distribution of funds from gaming machines. That is something that should quite rightly be discussed in some detail. It is good that this bill is now coming before the House and will be passed on to the select committee, where it will be debated in the right and proper way and where the public and those with interests in these areas will be able to put forward their submissions.

So ACT New Zealand will support this measure going to the select committee. Beyond that we are making absolutely no commitment. We want to hear the arguments. I was hopeful that the officials for the Government might have been able to give us those arguments, and, as I said, we were certainly prepared to revisit the issue in relation to the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). However, I think that this course of action is probably the best one, and ACT will support this legislation going to the select committee.

The Gambling Amendment Bill aims to allow licensing trust members and trustees of community trusts to be involved in decisions about the operation of pokie machines and the distribution of profits. Although the Green Party fundamentally believes that overall we should drastically cut the number of pokie machines in our communities, we do have some sympathy for the anomalous position licensing trusts have found themselves in after the passage of the 2003 Gambling Act, which allows clubs and the TAB to run their own machines and manage the proceeds but not the licensing trusts.

Although the Green Party did not back the Gambling Bill as a whole and voted against it at the time, we did support those aspects of the legislation aimed at ending the power often held by pub management over the running of pokie machines and their control over consequent funding decisions. It was clear to many people in different parts of the country that some proprietors of non-casino gaming machines all too often allowed their own prejudices to determine who got what and who did not get anything at all. On top of that, allegations of trade-offs and contra deals were fairly common, from grants being conditional upon sports teams drinking on the premises or staying in certain motels, through to one or two criminal cases whereby major outright corruption in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars was the order of the day.

In rightly legislating to bring this situation to an end, the passage of the Gambling Act also left behind a somewhat contradictory consequence. RSAs, workingmen’s clubs, the TAB, and racing clubs could run pokie machines and use the proceeds pretty much as they chose for their own organisational purposes, but licensing trusts were put into the same category as all those societies, large and small, that have been specifically set up to manage pokie machines and distribute the profits, and in which key persons are not permitted to have any role in decisions about funding.

Licensing trust members have made a good case to Parliament that they deserve to be treated differently from organisations like the Scottwood Trust, the Lion Foundation, and all the other charity gaming associations whose management and boards are unelected, or certainly are not elected by any form of public ballot. Licensing trusts, on the other hand, are far more open entities whose board members are elected by the community every 3 years in elections conducted under the provisions of the Local Electoral Act. Those boards members are directly accountable to the people who vote them in and are thus in a significantly different position from gaming machine societies. The licensing trusts are also subject to a whole range of regulatory controls outside the purview of the Gambling Act, such as the Public Audit Act, and they are open to audit by the Auditor-General. Licensing trust accounts must be open to public inspection, and licensing trust members cannot benefit personally in any way from the activities of their outlets.

There appear to be only five licensing trusts that operate pokie machines in their own venues. It seems fair that they should be treated equitably with clubs rather than with charity gaming bodies, as the public who vote for their boards would not continue to support them if they, for example, minimised gaming returns by using the funds to prop up a failing liquor outlet. The big worry the licensing trusts have had is that the new Gambling Act forces them to dismantle and replace the structures they have developed over a long period—structures through which they say they do their best to be fair to all applicants for funding and to maximise the return to the local community. The Invercargill Licensing Trust, for example, tells us that in 2003-04 it returned 57 percent of gaming profits to local organisations, as opposed to most other returns around the country of under 40 percent.

The bill we are considering for the first time today aims to allow licensing trust members and trustees to reinstate their involvement in decisions about funding from the proceeds of pokie machines on their premises. The Green Party believes that that is simply common sense, and we will support the bill. We hope it can be dealt with at the select committee reasonably expeditiously, for the sake of all involved. However, in saying that, I reiterate that our fundamental approach to the gambling industry remains unchanged. We would prefer to see a huge reduction in the number of pokie machines operating in New Zealand and a total revamp of the way the profits of those that remain are distributed. We would also like the many community organisations that now rely on the proceeds of human misery for their continued survival to consider other funding options, and the Government and other non-gambling funders to better resource the sector so that groups do not feel obliged to depend on the addictions and desperation of some of our poorest people for the pursuance of their good works.

However, although we live in a country that not only allows a massive proliferation of gambling opportunities but actually endorses and promotes gambling in many forms, it is logical that there is equity in the way different proprietors are treated. The Green Party hopes that this bill will be moved reasonably quickly through the House once the Christmas break is over, so that the existing longstanding structures used by the licensing trusts will not have to be replaced and trust members can continue to distribute the maximum amount of funding back in their local areas.

I also hope that I will still be around in Parliament when we pass legislation that will deal with the far more fundamental issues in the gambling sector, such as taking the steps needed to reduce the harm done to so many people in our country. Recent figures from the Department of Internal Affairs show that gamblers lost a record $2 billion last year, an increase of 9 percent on the year before. Roughly speaking, that is $5 million a day, much of it taken out of the homes of some of our lowest-income families. Eighty-seven percent of people who sought treatment from the Problem Gambling Foundation said that they have a problem with pokie machines. The figure for Māori women is up to 96 percent. The fact that the proceeds of pokie addictions are then used for the benefit of all sorts of worthy causes should not be an excuse for any values-based group to continue to endorse the industry, as seems to be happening if the many letters coming into MPs’ offices at present are anything to go by.

I look forward to the day when we have a Government with the courage to implement a truly responsible gambling bill, unlike the only partially responsible one that passed last year. Meanwhile, in the name of equity the Green Party will be supporting this minor amendment to what is actually a fatally flawed Act.

I rise on behalf of United Future to make a short contribution to this debate. But before I get to the bill, I just make the observation that a few people have been talking about some of the detrimental effects of gambling. I do not think anybody in this Chamber could possibly put aside the detrimental effects of gambling, but this bill does not actually deal with that. It deals with a very specific aspect. The Gambling Amendment Bill exempts licensing trust members from being treated as a key person under the 2003 Gambling Act. It was an omission that should never have gone through, but it did. It was an oversight. The significance of this amendment bill is to allow licensing trust members to be involved, as they previously had been, in decisions about the operation of gaming machines and the distribution of gaming-machine proceeds. There should not be a conflict of interest, because licensing trust members are publicly accountable to their local community. In other words, they should not be able to benefit personally from the licensing trust, and I think the provisions in this bill prevent just that. The rest of the amendments are technical in nature, to give effect to the purposes I have just stated. United Future will be supporting this bill.

It appears the House is on its way to giving the support of all parties to this bill, at least as far as its referral to the select committee, and I would like to thank members all around the Chamber for that statement of support for this bill. If it is good enough for racing clubs and chartered clubs to be exempt from the venue persons rule under the Gambling Act on the basis of democratic elections, then it is, under this bill, equally desirable for licensing trusts to be exempt. I support the bill.

In beginning my contribution on the Gambling Amendment Bill, can I just comment on the view of Heather Roy, who talked about the fact that she was told that ACT was the only party opposing this legislation—as, it appears, New Zealand First was told it was the only party opposing the legislation, and I think she indicated that the Greens were told they were the only party opposing this legislation. I must tell the House that the National Party was also told it was the only party opposing this legislation. When I was told that—

💬 Rod Donald: You ended up supporting it.

—in the beginning, about a month ago, I said I did not know where the spin was coming from, because we had not considered it. And I cannot imagine the ACT party wanting to support this privilege for licensing trusts. Whatever the shenanigans that have been managed out of the Minister’s office, they have certainly antagonised the parties involved.

The Gambling Act itself has been the subject of some interest in the Bay of Plenty in recent weeks. As the local member of Parliament I have been approached by a number of people who are disappointed with the proposals that the Government has passed to change the way in which pokie funds, for example, are distributed. Last Friday I met with people from Otamarakau School, near Te Puke, which received a $45,000 grant from the Lion Foundation to put in a playground at their school. The school could never ever have afforded a playground, other than through that generous contribution from the Lion Foundation. Otamarakau School fears that the Government’s plan to have grants centralised from a few Auckland-based authorities will mean that those schools at the end of the line miss out.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: What? The member is making it up again—mincing in the House and making it up.

The Minister may say that, but I have to say it is only 3 days until we have a Minister of Education without a speech impediment. The Minister can say I am making it up, but he was not there on Friday when people from Otamarakau School came and talked to me about their concerns. I think it is a very important issue that those schools are concerned about their ability to provide services and facilities for their communities, because of the changes to these plans.

A month ago I accompanied the next member of Parliament for the Otago electorate, Jackie Deans of Oamaru, into Oamaru. Amongst the appointments we had was a meeting with the Oamaru Licensing Trust. The trust explained to me its frustration as a result of the changes to the Gambling Act that prevented it from being involved in the distribution of local profits. The trust explained the reason. Because the trust is an elected authority, it has a level of democratic mandate. It is a community authority. From the applications made for the proceeds that the trust gathered from pokie machines, it had a clear knowledge of which organisations were double-dipping or triple-dipping, which organisations were legitimate, and which were not. The trust was able to bring that local knowledge to bear in its allocation decisions.

I challenged the trust on one of the concerns that the Government expressed when it passed the Gambling Act. The Government said that those who had input into the decisions on where pokie profits went—that is, publicans—often had trade-offs and contra-deals whereby they might sponsor a sports group and expect it to buy beer, as it were, from its local establishment. I tackled the Oamaru Licensing Trust on that. The trust was clear that licensing trusts were much more considered in their sponsorship arrangements and the way that they got involved in the community, and that no such deals were ever contemplated by those organisations.

As I travelled around Oamaru with Jackie Deans, the National Party candidate for Otago and the next member of Parliament—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Who?

Jackie Deans, from Oamaru. She is the former Deputy Mayor of Oamaru. More people in Oamaru have voted for her, in her political career, than have voted for David Parker. Jackie Deans, the National Party candidate for Otago, was able to demonstrate the important benefits to that community from the Oamaru Licensing Trust. I think she, together with the trust, made a convincing argument about why trusts should be entitled to maintain the right they currently have to approve those grants.

I suppose it is testament to the lobbying power of the Invercargill Licensing Trust and the Waitakere Licensing Trust that the Government would move so swiftly to introduce this legislation into the House, under urgency. I am not sure whether anyone else in New Zealand would consider it is the sort of legislation that requires Parliament to sit on a Friday afternoon, and maybe go into a Saturday afternoon.

💬 Dail Jones: It’s Tuesday afternoon.

We are in the real world here. We are here on Friday afternoon, and possibly the sitting will flow into Saturday afternoon, if not Monday morning. I do not think this bill is relevant to an urgency motion, because there is no definitive date by which the bill has to be passed. It will just mosey its way through the select committee process. There is no great sense of urgency from the Government on it. I cannot see any benefit whatsoever from it being included in the urgency motion. I think it is equivalent to the amendment bill dealing with Tokelauan coins, which was one of the centrepieces of the urgency motion during the “mother of all Budgets” in 1991.

A number of members have given contributions on why people should be prevented from gambling, and on why people should be denied the right to play a pokie machine. I think this House often loses sight of the fact that adults should be able to make those sorts of choices in their own lives. They should be allowed to decide whether they want to gamble their money. They should be free to choose how they spend their discretionary income. This fact of poor people spending a lot of their income on gambling is nothing new. In years gone by people would rail about the amount of money spent at housie halls in Christchurch. They would rail about people who went to the trots or to the races and spent their pay packets on the horses. They would rail against people who spent their money on, for example, Golden Kiwi. There have always been gambling choices for New Zealanders. It is a good part of entertainment, and New Zealanders should be able to expect to continue to have those choices. If Green Party members, for example, are worried about low-income people spending their money on gambling, then I have to tell them that if they close off one opportunity, people will exercise their freedom of choice to gamble somewhere else. Really, what Parliament should be doing is regulating in the way that we are doing currently, without being extensive and denying people’s rights.

The National Party in Opposition will support the progress of the Gambling Amendment Bill. I know that Jackie Deans, who I am sure is out knocking on doors in Oamaru and Alexandra today, will be pleased to know that we support the progress of this legislation.

I wish to make a personal explanation under Standing Order 343 with regard to my speech impediment. In 1969, as a schoolchild, I suffered a relatively serious accident that resulted in four teeth and a large part of my upper jaw and nose being removed. As a result, I have a speech impediment. It is something I do not mind at all.

I support the first reading of the Gambling Amendment Bill, and its referral to the Government Administration Committee.

I want to make a few comments on this bill, because I have some views about the way in which the administration of pokie-machine funding in particular is being handled in this country. I want to state at the beginning that the National Party supports this bill going to the Government Administration Committee. However, I have some personal reservations about the bill—not because of the way in which licensing trusts operate, or because of the fact that licensing trust trustees who are also part of the trusts that distribute the funds will be excluded from the “key person” provision of the central legislation, but rather because the sensible approach that is being taken with this amendment should, in my view, apply to every organisation around the country that is set up to distribute the funds, where trustees are also the owners of the premises in which the gambling machines are located.

It seems to me that the Parliament is being asked to give some sort of preferential arrangement to people who sit on licensing trusts, yet those same arrangements are not available to individual publicans, bar owners, or cafe owners who pay the money from the machines into trusts for distribution. One of the worst aspects of this is that by allowing trustees of distributing bodies to become—

💬 Rod Donald: Who funded the National campaign?

I am sorry, Mr Speaker, but am I going to be subject to this terrible assault from the Green Party?

💬 Rod Donald: We want to know.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The point of order is coming out of the member’s time.

No, the point of order cannot come out of my time.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Yes, it is. I ask the member to carry on. I know what the point of order is.

I wish to make a personal explanation about the allegation made by the Green Party member that I received funding. To save the Green Party member from continually interjecting along those lines, I make it clear that it is a matter of public record that in 1996 my election campaign did receive a modest donation from a trust that derived its funds from pokie machines. Might I also say that a number of other parties in this House received considerably larger donations from the same source than the National Party.

I want to refer to a perfect example of the stupidity that is being exercised by bureaucrats in the Department of Internal Affairs. What is wrong with trusts distributing money to the community for community purposes? Why do the Green Party, the Labour Party, and a number of other parties in this House, which seem to get upset by the fact that sometimes political parties have received money from that source, seek to remove the political process from the community?

This is exactly the sort of issue we were talking about last night in respect of the Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill—a desire to see that only central government can have a say in these matters and that no community, effectively, can be influential in choosing to put funds into a political campaign in order that its best interests may be represented. It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with that. However, what we have in this bill is a situation where someone is elected to a licensing trust, and he or she becomes part of the management of a number of hotels that come under the auspices of that trust. Then that same person is elected to the body that receives the funds from the trust’s hotels, bars, cafes, or pokie machines for distribution to the community. If that were a privately owned outfit, that person could not be one and the same. However, this bill will allow that exact provision, on the basis that the person does not personally benefit. I think it is a very thin argument to run. A person in that position could advance funds to a particular sports club that he or she was involved with, to a school that his or her children attended, or to a travelling sports team that perhaps he or she was a part of. Seemingly, there would be no problem with that, because the person was elected by the community at large to administer the trust in the first place.

That argument could be extended to say that someone who has licensed premises holds that licence by virtue of the community allowing him or her to hold it. The community has effectively, through the licensing laws, said that the person is a satisfactory individual to run the particular activity. What is wrong with extending that argument to say that the same person can be involved in the distribution of funds from pokie machines in the wider community, not just that person’s own community, but to organisations in the community? I say to Mr Donald, and to those members of the Labour Party who find that idea somehow offensive, that if it were not for this sort of distribution, many sports in this country would not survive in the way they do today. I do not think that many of our children would have the sporting opportunities they have today.

It bothers me a great deal that the Department of Internal Affairs has decided there is so much amiss in the system that it has to be involved to an extent that will chew up considerable amounts of money—money that might otherwise go to good purposes—for the administration of its own bureaucracy. Let us be clear about how this will work. The Department of Internal Affairs now not only is able to monitor electronically but is able to employ people to inspect these premises to make sure the machines are working. I would have thought that the best way to know whether something was amiss was to watch the electronic monitor, and then monitor the flow of cash that comes from them. One does not have to be some sort of in-the-field inspector to do that.

The National Party wants to see this bill progress to the Government Administration Committee, but I want to say that a number of us are disappointed that the definition of “key person” is not being extended to allow many other operators in the business to also sit on the trusts that are part of the distribution of the funds. We can see that the bureaucracy that is growing up around the funds is starting to soak up far too many of the dollars that ordinarily should go to community purposes.

I rise to support this bill, which has been put forward by my very good friend George Hawkins.

Bill read a first time.

I move, That the Government Administration Committee consider the Gambling Amendment Bill and that the committee report the bill to the House on or before 1 March 2005.

Motion agreed to.