Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 10 October 2024 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

The select committee will consider this bill for only four weeks. This reflects the fact that the bill is very short—just four clauses—and very simple. The bill, essentially, recreates the temporary amendment to section 4 and, therefore, continues the status quo.

More importantly, however, it is my hope to provide community organisations relying on this exemption with the confidence that they can continue to conduct their lotteries legally and reliably beyond 31 October. It is my desire that the select committee report back to the House by 10 October so that the House may see the bill passed in time to enact this permanent exemption upon the expiration of temporary exemption. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I rise to take a call on the specific matter of the report-back date to the House on 10 October that the Minister has put on the Table today. I rise to speak against that motion and I will outline those reasons now.

I am the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee that will be considering the bill. The concerns I wish to raise, while we are a dedicated, hard-working committee that often flies under the radar—we don’t always get those bills that make it into headlines—we are an important—

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: And modest.

Very modest committee of hard-working members. I know that we will diligently approach this bill in the way that we need to, but I alluded to some of the concerns I was going to raise in the contribution I made earlier on the substance of the bill, and that is around the need for there to be proper community consultation on this bill.

It does go further than where the Government had established the law under Labour. Look, we support that. We support there being a permanent approach; however, and we need to be honest about it, this does actually make permanent an opportunity for gambling to occur online permanently. While I don’t believe the risks are such as you consider the likes of a pokie operating being online—it’s a completely different scenario, right? I’m not suggesting that they are at all at the same level of risk for a person who is undertaking the activity. We do have to be honest about the challenges that we face through harm, and the importance of us hearing from the community and being able to tease out with officials and giving officials enough time to provide us with that proper advice.

For those of us who are engaged as parliamentarians in that process, we know that the advice officials provide to us is critical. We will ask officials to provide us with detailed advice, and then we’ll ask questions and come back again. Our committee has just been doing that on another bill which we can’t talk to yet. But it’s the practice of a select committee to actually interrogate and seek really substantive advice from officials, and then to be able to say, “Well, actually, we need more information on a particular matter.” So to only have four weeks in order to do that is actually an unreasonably short amount of time for us to consider it.

I don’t agree with the Minister’s view that because the bill is short and only includes a couple of clauses, it’s not a big matter—that’s not the case. We can change laws where you’ve only added one clause to a piece of legislation and you can make an enormous change to a law, and we know that as parliamentarians. Even just a word inside a clause can make an enormous difference to any piece of law that we may consider from time to time. I don’t accept the argument that because it’s only a couple of pages, that somehow that means we don’t have substantive matters to consider as part of the consideration of this bill.

As I said, we are a hard-working committee, and we are a committee of people who like to ask questions. I say that, actually, as something that I think should be celebrated. We have members in our committee that actually do like to get into the detail of a bill, and we will do that. We will ask questions of officials. We will, hopefully, hear from submitters in detail and ask them questions. It is my hope as the chair that we will hear submissions from the community organisations that seek to benefit from this, of which there actually are many. We want to make sure we have adequate time to hear from those charities, because their voice is important in this process. Likewise, it’s important to hear from other organisations. I can think of the likes of the Problem Gambling Foundation, other organisations that do work supporting people—

💬 SPEAKER: Let’s stay concise. Is the member moving an amendment?

No, I am speaking against the Minister’s motion, which was to put on the Table that the select committee report back by 10 October and to set aside the Standing Orders that allow us to meet during the evenings and at other times when the House is sitting. She’s put that in her motion.

As the Labour Party, we will not be supporting the Minister’s motion. I’m outlining the reasons why we’re not supporting that motion, and I’m doing so as the chair, because I do have the responsibility of chairing that committee—one which I take seriously. I’ve just noted that our committee is very hard-working, will absolutely be—

💬 SPEAKER: Yeah, that’s all good. It’s a very concise debate.

It is a very concise debate. What I do want to do is be able to take that time to talk through the process that the select committee will be following in order to meet that—

💬 SPEAKER: No, that’s outside the concise nature of the motion. The member’s doing very well to extend time, but I think her points have been rather well made. Perhaps now get back on to that concise thing.

The Labour Party won’t be supporting the motion of the Minister because we would like to have the usual time frame that we would take in order to actually consider a bill. As the Minister said, she believes that it can have a short time frame because it’s a short bill in terms of the length of it, but, actually, as I’ve already noted, that is not necessarily an indication of the impact or substance of a bill. Labour won’t be supporting the Minister’s motion, and we do not commend that motion to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also rise on behalf of the Green Party to say that we are very concerned in terms of the truncated time frame that has been suggested by the Minister of Internal Affairs when it comes to the select committee process. I understand that from the Minister’s perspective this is quite a short bill and the fact that, with this particular bill, they may not need the same level of consultation as one would expect. I also think that it is ironic that the Minister’s party are happy to have a drawn out process when it comes to the Treaty principles bill, but over here we are looking for what is, essentially, not four weeks but two weeks.

When we’re looking at the duration of this, when we’re looking at the process of the Governance and Administration Committee, with 10 October as the report-back date, we must also factor in that the only remaining consecutive non-sitting weeks we have for the remainder of the year are at the beginning of October. Particularly, it lies over school holidays. For a lot of parents—and some of our MPs are also parents—they may actually have booked holidays for that period.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Would the member come back to the timing of the bill, because there are processes for subbing people into select committee should they be needed. As the Speaker said before I was in the Chair, just keep this concise around the timing, please.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think it does highlight the issue that, yes, although we have the process for subbing members, we don’t have to sub those members if this bill was given the proper time for consultation, extending even just by a few weeks. It is not an unreasonable request to have the two non-sitting weeks not be considered as part of this and give a four-week sitting week block—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is about the bill and the actual concept of the bill at the timing, not about the lives of members around the House. We need to be very concise. I know it’s relevant to you, but it’s not relevant to this motion.

But, in terms of the motion here—Madam Speaker, if you wouldn’t mind also clarifying that we are looking at a motion to shorten the process of the select committee, which it is my understanding that it normally has a duration of six months. Dropping that from six months to one month is significant. As the honourable Rachel Boyack mentioned before, it does add additional pressure to the select committee, in this case the Governance and Administration Committee. I just simply would like to know what was the rationale behind shortening that, particularly from—of all people—the Minister, who is also the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. I would really like to know: what is the rationale for shortening it to one month?

Like the previous speaker, Rachel Boyack, mentioned, another thing that we are looking at here is although this is quite a simple bill and we have spoken on this in the first reading, this bill requires public consultation. As the legislature, we must give the public—and this includes both in terms of the charities but also in terms of those preventions, or communities that are trying to prevent things like gambling and addiction—a chance to be heard as part of the select committee process. I think I would really like to see some reason why we need to have such a short process.

I move, That the date in the motion be changed to 30 November 2024 and all subsequent words be removed.

I move that motion because I was extremely disappointed with the Minister’s explanation for why this select committee report-back time should be shortened. In fact, there were no reasons given. She stated that the bill is a short bill, but that bears no rational connection whatsoever with the amount of time that it takes to deliberate on it. It’s well understood in this House that when the procedures of a select committee are to be circumvented or shortened, a fulsome explanation is expected to be given by the Minister—not one in which she jumps up, basically states her wish for a shortened report-back time, says it’s a short bill, and sits back down. Gambling is an important—if the Minister wants to seek leave, or I will yield to you, to say more on the matter if you’re intending to. Do you intend to say more on the matter?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Minister’s had a call. I don’t think the Minister is able to take another call in this debate.

I can yield to her to answer the question. Does she wish to answer the question? No, and I’m not surprised, because she can’t answer the question. Here we have a Minister who basically just wants to circumvent the process without any real reason. There is no urgency in this bill. We all agree that the concept behind the bill is one that is worthy of going to select committee and being deliberated on. In a period of four weeks, NGOs, community organisations, individuals, and others simply don’t have the time—and who knows what period of time the select committee will call for submissions? It’s quite likely, given that there will be drafting to do, a report to be had, deliberations to be undertaken, there will be a one-week process or time frame for proceedings. I didn’t move a motion that pushed it out to six months; it’s only a couple more months and removing those additional words.

It’s another example of the Minister not really thinking, because why does the committee have to sit while the House is sitting? Why is she depriving members of their right to sit in this House and debate on legislation because she wants to rush through a select committee process? That’s a very genuine point that was alluded to by the Green member Lawrence Xu-Nan, that people are elected to this House to represent their constituents in this House—not to sit in select committees and look at legislation rather than being here.

As to being able to sit outside of Wellington, it’s just fatuous—why don’t you look at the motion you need? This committee does not need to sit outside of Wellington, so why give it permission to sit outside of Wellington? Absolutely ridiculous. Sitting on a Friday after the House is sat—well, is it going to do that? Is there any expectation that it does that? Are you going to hope that it does that? Why didn’t you write the motion you wanted? All we need is for this committee to be able to have some more time, but perhaps not the full six months, because perhaps this bill isn’t as complex as others. The Minister gave no reasons. She just stood up, as they do in the ACT party, entitled: “Oh, I just want it. We’ve got a majority, so we’re going to truncate the process.”—just like Paul Goldsmith did with his Amendment Paper.

The fact of the matter is that this bill, just like any other bill, deserves full and proper consideration. If the Government is going to treat the select committee process as a tick box where they they’re not giving it the time and resources to do a good job, and one where people can have enough time to deliberate on their submissions and to actually make arrangements to turn up to select committee, I hope this committee will have the time to take oral submissions. I’m not sure it will, but if it does, you’ve got to accept people have diaries that get full up with other obligations—work and personal, family obligations. How is the committee going to get oral submissions on this important issue when they’re going to ring them up and ask, “Can you submit tomorrow?”, “Of course not.”? People aren’t at the disposal of this House at our beck and call. I could understand if it was three or four months, but four weeks is no time at all. It’s actually pretty shameful. If the Minister’s changed her mind and does want to make a couple of comments to answer the question, “What is the real reason you’re rushing this?”, I will yield.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just on this issue, I’ve just taken some advice, and when an amendment has been moved, a member who has already spoken may speak again. That is not a “must”; that is a “may”. If the Minister wishes to, she may speak again.

Thank you for that. That was in the back of my mind, but I’m confident that the Minister will have found her backbone and will stand up and take a call on this because—[Interruption] no, but to be serious for a moment and then I will sit down—the New Zealand public and other parliamentarians can genuinely expect to be told real reasons. The fact that the bill is short isn’t a reason. If there is some genuine urgency, then that’s maybe the case. They haven’t been knocking on my door saying, “We’ve got a raffle that we can’t do in four weeks’ time.” Perhaps the Minister will take a call on my amendment. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It’s my understanding the Minister is going to.

Thank you Madam Speaker. I’ll take a short call just to suggest that I oppose the amendment to the motion that I have moved, based on one very important ground, that the member did not listen correctly to my original motion—that it’s my hope to provide community organisations relying on this exemption with confidence that they can continue beyond 31 October this year, which is the reason for wishing for the select committee to report back by 10 October so that we can have the law through this House in time for these charities.

With the time I have, I’d just also like to, if I may, respond to the member Rachel Boyack and her reason for opposing the motion, who suggested that, you know, there is a difficulty here in that it’s a very, very short little bill, but it changes a lot in the law. That’s incorrect. Under the previous Government, there were only a small specific number of class 3 lotteries that were originally allowed to have this exemption. The previous Government then changed it to all class 3 lotteries. The member is incorrect in her statement. It simply extends the temporary exemption that we currently have, permanently.

I’m going to take a call from Rachel Boyack, who can because there’s been an amendment taken of a call.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to take an opportunity to take a short call on the amendment put forward by my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, and just respond to the Minister’s comment around the type of change that this is, because I disagree with the Minister. They’re actually taking something that is a temporary practice and making it permanent.

That actually is a big change. We specifically made that change during COVID when people were unable to meet in person, people were unable to stand outside supermarkets with tickets that people may purchase, were unable to, you know, do those usual things, going door to door. The reason we did it was that organisations like the Heart Foundation, like the Royal New Zealand Coastguard, could not actually talk to people face to face to sell them a ticket, and so we put in place a temporary measure. We acknowledge that that actually did produce a risk of harm for people, but that we also needed to ensure that some of our critical community organisations were able to operate their fund-raising activities.

Now that situation that presented itself at the time no longer exists. Those organisations that couldn’t, during COVID lockdowns, go and sell tickets to raffles outside a supermarket, which we’ve all walked past and purchased one—it’s a good thing to do—can do that again. I completely disagree with the member, and I’m sure this will come up during the select committee process, that we are not making a large change; it is a large change. We’re going from—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Back to the timing.

I’m responding to the Minister’s comments.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, and you have.

The reason I want to take another call was for that response, but also to say that we’re supporting my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s amendment to actually give us that time to have this conversation. The fact that we’re debating this in the House now shows, I think, that we’re going to need to have some time at select committee, and we’ll end up in a situation where we end up in the committee of the whole House having to ask a lot of questions and spend a lot of time there. Actually, that’s not always the most helpful time to actually have those decent, deep conversations.

The questions I will be asking when this comes forward, in a detailed way, is what processes are being put in place around harm minimisation? I think that is a valid question to ask. We do have people that will potentially be harmed by making this permanent, so I would urge the House and, I think, those members from parties that may be thinking, “Hmm, is this actually going to be enough time for the committee to do its work?” to consider actually supporting this amendment to the motion from my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Speaking to the amendment, we support the amendment, and I just want to clarify something: it is our view that the essential tenet of the legislation is appropriate. We are not opposing the legislation itself, but gambling is a pernicious public ill when poorly managed and poorly regulated, and so it is very important that in, scrutinising the way in which we liberalise a gambling regime or extend it to permit what this bill does, we thoroughly scrutinise it to protect public good, to protect the public from the harm that we know gambling causes. I have a family that has gamblers in its past, and it is a very destructive thing when you become addicted to gambling, and so it is very right that we extend the period of the select committee so we can hear from those expert agencies and those experienced on how to protect the public good while allowing there to be the supporting of rights.

On the question of the 31 October date, surely that deadline of the temporary order was well known by the Minister ahead of time, and surely springing it upon us now so that we now have to have a report back by 10 October so as to meet that 31 October deadline—that is surely information that the Minister knew about many months ago, so why is it that only now this truncated proposal comes to the House and comes for the select committee’s consideration and the House’s consideration?

We strongly support the amendments being proposed by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb and we support that it be extended and we call on the members opposite and the Minister to consider that position and change their position on that and support a full select committee process. Thank you.

The question is that the amendment to the motion in the name of Hon Dr Duncan Webb be agreed to.