Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I move, That the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the 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—

SPEAKER: Can I just ask the Minister to move that other microphone around towards her, to that spot there; that might help, yeah.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Is that better?

SPEAKER: We are making adjustments to your facilities.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: From where I was—during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and 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.

I’m pleased to be here today with the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill. This bill will ensure that a longstanding fundraising tool remains fit for purpose for the community organisations who depend on it to fund their operations. This amendment will ensure that the Gambling Act 2003 continues to provide the tools and means for one of its key purposes: community benefit.

One would be hard pressed to find someone in New Zealand who is not familiar with community fund-raising efforts in the form of gambling, be it a raffle run by a local branch of Fire and Emergency New Zealand or a lottery run by the New Zealand Heart Foundation for which the top prize is a house. One would also not necessarily realise how often the community services and activities they interact with are partially financed through fund-raising in the form of licensed gambling.

One such type of fund-raising is class 3 gambling, defined in the Gambling Act as gambling with prizes over the value of $5,000 from which the proceeds are applied or distributed to an authorised purpose such as charities or non-commercial operations which benefit the community. A common form of class 3 gambling is lotteries, used to fund organisations that provide a charitable service to local communities or New Zealanders generally.

Normally, the Gambling Act prohibits gambling operators from providing gambling online. The Act prevents what is called “remote interactive gambling” or gambling at a distance by means of a communication device. This prohibition on remote interactive gambling is one way in which the Act works to prevent harm and maintain the integrity of gambling provided in New Zealand. Contravening this prohibition has serious consequences for operators of gambling in New Zealand. For the organisations and charities operating lotteries with a class 3 licence, selling tickets via tools such as their website could come with penalties including suspension or loss of their licence for that lottery draw or, more concerningly, prosecution, with a maximum penalty of a $50,000 fine.

In 2020, as part of a suite of law changes made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government introduced a temporary exemption to the Gambling Act, which allowed three large class 3 licence holders—the Heart Foundation, the Coastguard, and Countdown Kids Charitable Trust—the ability to continue selling their lottery tickets via remote means, such as by telephone and the internet. In 2021, this amendment was expanded to include all licensed class 3 lotteries and extended until the end of October this year. These amendments have been a valuable demonstration of the relative safety of this type of gambling. It does not allow gamblers to reinvest their winnings as some other forms of gambling do, and is not permitted to be conducted on a gambling machine, avoiding the appealing features these often include. In the time that these gambling operators have been able to sell their tickets online, they have proven their continued value and safety. It is this demonstration that gives me confidence in making the exemption permanent.

Since 2003, when the Gambling Act was first enacted, and in the time since the first temporary exemption in 2020, the world, and New Zealand with it, has changed substantially. Where in the early 2000s print media still dominated the advertising landscape and balancing a chequebook was a common household task, today New Zealanders consume information in advertising almost entirely online and digital payment tools are so simplified and integrated into everyday life that the major banks no longer accept cheques as part of their services.

If the temporary exemption were to expire next month without a permanent solution, I’m concerned about what this would mean for those organisations relying on this fund-raising tool. In practical terms, this would mean charities removing payment platforms from their websites, community organisations returning to advertising lotteries in print media and in person, and vital community services being forced to seek ticket sales in person. More significantly, these changes would likely result in a loss of customers, both existing and new; a loss of revenue for these important and valued community organisations; increasing operational costs and resourcing to fund-raise, with impacts on the services that these organisations provide; sunk costs for digital platforms built to sell tickets; and an increase in safety risks for volunteers selling tickets door to door. Put simply, I want to ensure, as I believe other members in this House would agree, that a hospice trust delivering care in the community, for example, can fund-raise as safely and efficiently as possible while focusing their resources on the care that they provide rather than on inefficient and costly fund-raising efforts.

The bill I am speaking to would ensure that these vital charities and organisations do not have to return to selling their lottery tickets in a fashion that complies with the prohibition on remote interactive gambling. The Gambling Act currently already exempts a range of gambling types from the prohibition on remote interactive gambling. It does so by modifying the definition of remote interactive gambling to exclude these types. Currently, they are: gambling operated by the Lotteries Commission, gambling authorised under the Racing Industry Act, online gambling with an overseas website, sales and promotion schemes, and, of course, class 3 lotteries until the end of October 2024. This bill would permanently add lotteries conducted by a gambling operator that holds a class 3 licence that allows them to operate lotteries to that list of gambling types not included in the definition of “remote interactive gambling”, and exempt them permanently from the prohibition on remote interactive gambling. The impact of this change for the organisations fund-raising via lotteries is the confidence that they can continue their safe and enjoyable fund-raising in the most cost-effective and efficient way possible without risking the licence which allows them to operate these lotteries.

It is my pleasure to introduce this legislation to the House and see that these organisations can continue to serve their communities. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a real pleasure for me to be able to take a call on the first reading of the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill.

I’ve spent a lot of time—obviously as a mother with lots of children, you become that mum who has to do the sausage sizzle, who has to sell raffles, who has to run gaming nights, you know, for the local surf club; you kind of become that naturally as that particular mum, particularly when you’ve got eight kids and when you’re a lawyer as well. The effort that charities and local community organisations have to put together in order to raise funds for really great initiatives—for example, today in Tauranga, the AIMS Games is on, the Association of Intermediate Middle Schools. It took our little group of parents, we had to fund-raise $22,000 to get those children there. It’s no easy effort, but we do it because we love the community that we live in, and we want the opportunity that is available for our children to be available for other children.

The reason why I’m standing on behalf of the Labour Party to speak on this particular bill is to offer our support for it. The reason why we are offering our support through the first reading to select committee is because actually this bill is almost word for word for a bill that I have in the tin at the moment. So the reason why this bill—

Andy Foster: Another one then!

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Yes, I know. And because previously I was the Minister of Internal Affairs and one of our members—Dr Anae Leavasa—came and saw me and he said, “Minister, there is a particular issue that the Heart Foundation really want our support on. They know that with COVID, they were given a particular exemption to be able to do these raffles.” Most people here have probably bought one of those raffles. You know, it’s the raffle to win a—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Postcard.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: I’m talking about Heart Foundation here, first—to win a house, say, in Queenstown. I’m sure many members of Parliament here have probably bought one of those tickets. During COVID, the Hon Jan Tinetti, who’s here in the House today, was also Minister of Internal Affairs at the time, so she allowed an exemption during that COVID period to allow that particular raffle, and those who are societies who run a class 3 licence, such as the Coastguard and Countdown Kids, allowed them to be able to take it from the paper raffles that you see a lot, or the letter raffles, and allowed it to go online. At the time, there was a sunset clause to that particular exemption, and that sunset clause is actually due to expire this year.

As a result of that, the Heart Foundation spoke to Dr Anae Leavasa. That was Clive Nelson and Mike Tomlinson, the leadership of the Heart Foundation. They spoke to Dr Anae Leavasa and they said, “Can you please help us to get a particular bill to extend this out?” As the Minister of Internal Affairs, I said to Dr Anae, “My apologies; I’m not able to do this within the bill programme that I have on, but, actually, if you put a member’s bill in the tin, it might be likely that your particular legislation, that little piece of legislation, might be able to get through faster than if I as the Minister am able to get the programme work on it.” Dr Anae Leavasa put it through the tin. Then, obviously, when the election happened and we came back into Parliament, I picked it up as the Opposition MP, and it is currently sitting in the ballot box right now.

This side of the House does support this bill. We know there are always some risks around opening up gambling, which is why we do welcome submissions from the public to say, “Are there areas we need to strengthen in this bill?” Again, this bill is almost word for word the same bill that’s in the ballot box. Clearly, Dr Anae Leavasa had really good drafting instructions given to our Parliamentary Counsel Office in order to draft that. We do welcome this bill. We know of the work that the Heart Foundation do. There are 180,000 people in New Zealand who suffer from heart diseases, and we know that the Heart Foundation depends on this lottery in order to raise the funds to pay for that research, to pay for that education.

So, without further ado, we want to support this bill to the first reading. We do welcome the public to be able to submit, ask us whether we need to strengthen it just to ensure that we’ve covered all the gambling harm that could be possible from this. But, otherwise, we want to thank the Hon Jan Tinetti, Dr Anae Leavasa for bringing this bill first to the House which we got through under COVID, and then through a members’ ballot. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take this short call on behalf of the Greens to support the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill. As we have already heard from my colleagues, this amendment bill is narrow and technical. The Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill—the bill—will allow class 3 gambling, such as lotteries, to be conducted remotely on a permanent basis.

Class 3 lotteries are used to raise funds for charitable and non-commercial purposes. For example, organisations like the Royal New Zealand Coastguard and the Heart Foundation use these lotteries to support their fund-raising efforts. The bill amends the Gambling Act 2003 to make permanent the temporary exemption currently in section 4A, which allows licensed class 3 lotteries to be exempt from the remote interact gambling prohibition outlined in Schedule 9. These temporary exemptions were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. What this means in the day to day is that this amendment will enable class 3 lotteries to, for example, continue receiving payments via phone or internet banking.

While we support this amendment as a technicality, we must acknowledge the broader conversation of gambling’s role within our communities. The Green Party advocates for reducing the social harm associated with gambling—specifically, our focus should be on harm minimisation in gambling legislation and regulation. One major way to reduce the harm associated with gambling is to ensure that community groups are not dependent on gambling revenue.

These organisations, such as the Royal New Zealand Coastguard and the Heart Foundation, are literally saving people’s lives and must be properly funded by central and local government. Take, for example, the Royal New Zealand Coastguard, Aotearoa New Zealand’s main maritime search and rescue organisation. When you look at the funding breakdown for Coastguard, two-thirds—66 percent—of their funding comes from donations, lotteries, memberships, sponsorships, and grants. The remaining one-third comes from the Government’s assistance. Let me say that again: two-thirds of the funding for Coastguard Tautiaki Moana, Aotearoa New Zealand’s main maritime search and rescue organisation, comes from donations and lotteries.

When we talk to those working in these organisations, we hear firsthand how fund-raising efforts and grant applications take precious resources away from the mahi and communities they serve. This is not a given. Our community and voluntary sector can be properly funded and resourced by central and local government. This would ensure that these groups can channel their resourcing towards the flax-roots mahi rather than focusing on fund-raising.

By supporting this bill, we take a step towards accommodating the evolving landscape of charitable fund-raising while remaining committed to reducing gambling-related harm and expanding alternative funding sources for our communities. Thank you.

The National Party enthusiastically supports the first reading of this Government bill. Anyone would think that we were on private member’s bill day today, but, no, the previous Government did not progress it as a Government bill, and this Government is.

I want to acknowledge our Minister of Internal Affairs for the success that she’s having in her portfolio in that wide-ranging ministry, including getting passport wait times back on track, I think, was the headline from the Minister—back on track was what she said earlier today—with 93 percent of passports now issued within two weeks. The Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill, first reading, is something that we are backing as a Government, and hence it’s coming here with the full weight of the House, and, hopefully, the full support of all parties.

The previous speaker for the Green Party, Kahurangi Carter, said that such invaluable charities must be properly funded by central and local government. Well, I’d like to table—I won’t seek leave—this news item here from Radio New Zealand on 17 May where Surf Lifesaving New Zealand and the Royal New Zealand Coastguard will receive a funding boost of $63.6 million over four years, this Government has announced. That’s right—$19 million for Coastguard and $44 million for Surf Lifesaving.

That money that Government commitment is coming in the way of extra funding as well, but the biggest winners are the likes of the New Zealand Heart Foundation, who we know were sending out brochures and forms via the post, via people’s letterboxes for people to manually post back. That legislation now puts a permanent end to the manual and administratively difficult process by consumers and charities. Now you can get on to the Coastguard website as well as the Heart Foundation website and go in, buy a ticket for their lotteries, and support those worthy charities. This permanent digitalisation for fund-raising by charities for their class 3 lottery tickets is long overdue and mostly warmly welcomed, and I encourage submissions to the select committee and commend the bill.

Mr Speaker, thanks. Like the other speakers here, New Zealand First supports this bill. It’s great to see this harmony breaking out around the House, and I wonder if it will continue for the rest of the afternoon.

We support this bill because it’s about the ability for community organisations to be able to raise money to enable the great work that they are doing to be able to continue and to expand. This bill is about helping class 3 licence holders by enabling fund-raising for the likes of lotteries, housie, and instant games to be done online as opposed to having to go door-to-door, or any other way.

For those people who are out there watching, class 3 organisations must be societies or corporate societies if they’re doing regular fund-raising; they must be raising money for community-authorised purposes, so the good works that we’d want to be done around the community; they must have a turnover of at least $25,000 or prizes of $5,000; they cannot involve machines—it’s not that instant reward which gets people into that continual cycle of reinvesting their winnings, so to speak, and then losing it all—and we’ve already heard the kinds of examples. They’re the great organisations like Countdown Kids Charitable Trust, the National Heart Foundation, the Royal New Zealand Coastguard, and many, many others.

This bill is common sense, and, in fact, it’s actually great to hear that its genesis was the trial which made common sense during the COVID years, because otherwise those organisations would not have been able to keep on raising the money, which they needed to do. It recognises that so much of our activity is now done online. Imagine if we’d said that we weren’t going to be able to allow ourselves to communicate online—the world would just about stop. This is really important, and it’s common sense in that way.

We’ve already had the experience of going online for class 3 during COVID and subsequently, and that seems to have worked well. As we’ve already heard, it’s going to be good to actually hear submissions from the public about what maybe didn’t work but also what really did work—that’s going to be very, very important—and this bill will make that online ability permanent.

The final thing that I wanted to say is just that I know that there’s a lot of angst about online gambling, but this is very, very different. It is not international organisations that are just wanting to make a profit; this is community organisations based in New Zealand and wanting to support really good stuff happening in New Zealand, and I commend this bill to the House.

I’m calling on this side of the House next.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It appears we’ve got a little bit out of order in our speeches, but I’m sure everyone will get an opportunity to have their say. It is a pleasure to take a call.

SPEAKER: No, you’re in perfect order. Whoever I call is next.

RACHEL BOYACK: It’s a pleasure—ha, ha! Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call on the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill. As previous speakers have noted, this is a continuation of the work that the Labour Party had done while we were in Government, particularly during COVID times, when we did have situations for some of our highly esteemed community organisations that run class 3 operations who were unable to continue running some of their critical fund-raising programmes during COVID because they were paper-based and occurred in person.

I am privileged to hold the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee and I’m pleased that this bill will be coming to our committee. We’ve already heard from some of the hard-working members of our committee and it looks like we will be working quite hard over the coming weeks—we’ll have another conversation about that later, though—to make sure that we consider this bill. What I did want to note, that I think is important for the committee to take into consideration, is that we will be extending this out beyond the named organisations that we had named while we were in Government. That was legislation that was specific to a small group of organisations like the Heart Foundation, like the Royal New Zealand Coastguard; this bill actually extends that out further. Furthermore, it makes it permanent, so it will be appropriate for us to hear from the community about any concerns they may wish to raise.

I think the comments that Mr Foster has already made well are worth repeating, which is that this is about those community organisations that operate class 3 gambling. This is not about any gambling that occurs offshore; it’s onshore here in New Zealand. It’s not gambling that I would say has the benefit of a profit-making exercise or for those who are interested in gambling for gambling’s sake; this is actually the type of activity that occurs in order to help fund-raise for some of our critical community organisations. I think that point has been well made by Mr Foster and I want to reiterate it. Having said that, we do know that when we take things online, it can become easier for people to access and then that can lead to harm. I think it will be important that during the select committee deliberations we have enough time with officials to be able to really dig into some of those concerns that the community may raise, and I’m sure that will happen.

I wanted to pay tribute particularly to one of the organisations that we had allowed to operate under our law, which is still in place until that sunset clause expires this year, and that is the Royal New Zealand Coastguard. In my electorate of Nelson we have an outstanding award-winning coastguard—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: It saved me once.

RACHEL BOYACK: I did not know that. My colleague Duncan Webb has just said that the Nelson Coastguard saved him once. I will probably go home and ask them about that. But I want to pay tribute to the team there, led by Pete Kara, who is an outstanding leader, and our fantastic Coastguard, who have a really strong connection with the Nelson community but have had to do fund-raising activities over the recent years; for example, to fund-raise for our fantastic new boat that was launched a couple of years ago. That does go out into some very dangerous conditions, often getting close to Cook Strait, not quite there, but close into places like Devil Island, where we’ve had really quite dangerous situations occur for boaties in our area. That’s an organisation that will benefit from this law being continued and being made permanent.

I do want to congratulate former colleagues the Hon Jan Tinetti and the Hon Barbara Edmonds, who were the two Ministers of Internal Affairs who put this work in place, in the first place, and it is good to see it continuing.

We will enjoy debating this at the select committee and, hopefully, making any necessary changes we need to make to make the bill better when we bring it back to the House, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. We got there, and I do want to say, firstly, that the purpose of the bill is to allow lotteries that raise funds for charitable or non-commercial purposes to operate online permanently.

I laugh at the irony I hear, particularly from the Labour member Barbara Edmonds. She said when she was the Minister of Internal Affairs that it would be quicker for change to be made on this specific legislation through the member’s bill ballot biscuit tin than for her to actually lead the work herself as the Minister. It could have taken 10, 15, 20 years for the bill to be drawn from the ballot, and yet she as the Minister decided not to do it quickly and to leave it to one of her colleagues to put it in the biscuit tin and for it to be done that way, and I say, “Rubbish!”

Here you’ve got a Minister of Internal Affairs who’s taken this matter seriously and is doing something about it—no credit to anyone previously; credit only to the current Minister who’s leading this work. I commend the bill to the House.

Talofa, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity. I just want to respond to my colleague on the other side of the House Tom Rutherford. We’ve heard from the Hon Barbara Edmonds. She gave a very impactful statement, and in her experience, she has been fund-raising for a very long time.

I come back to the bill. It is a pleasure to make a contribution. It is helpful to understand that we have had two members who have been—

Hon Jan Tinetti: Unlike the lack of knowledge on the other side.

Tom Rutherford: You could have done something about it.

SPEAKER: If members want to be invited to take it outside, they will be.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE: —Minister of Internal Affairs. And we’ve heard the purpose of this amendment bill and the change in terms of the Gambling Act 2003. The temporary provision that is currently in section 4A will exempt class 3 gambling in the form of lottery from the prohibition of remote interactive gambling in section 9.

This is a very important change that is being made here, and Labour supports it to the select committee process because we have heard, on this side of the House, from a number of our community who are still worried and facing different gambling harms. With the movement to online, any regulatory impacts or new provisions or permanent provisions require a very good submission process. We want to hear from our community who have raised these concerns. So, for the record and for those listening at home, there are long concerns around online gambling harm minimisation. What are those gambling harm minimisations and what are the tools in place via legislation?

I was asked to read the departmental disclosure statement—there is no regulatory impact statement—and, on the front, it says, “[When] there are certain significant powers or features in the Bill that might be of particular Parliamentary or public interest … [warrants] an explanation.” The select committee must be that filter that questions and allows our public to make those submissions so that the select committee can hear from the public and from those who are working in the space.

I just have with me some of the evidence that has been presented to the public. One of those papers is called the Māori Specific Preventing and Minimising Gambling Harm Evaluation, presented and prepared by Kōkiri Consultancy, April 2024. Another quite recent one is a position paper on online gambling which was produced in August 2024. The organisations that have raised this right throughout Aotearoa are asking Parliament and members of Parliament to consider the effects when there are regulatory changes.

So, whilst the Labour Party is supporting it through the first reading, there needs to be important understanding as to how a piece of legislation achieves that balance for the community of Aotearoa in terms of positive and negative changes, which the select committee has to understand and mitigate through legislation, through good quality legislation, that affects people’s lives. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr Speaker.

I stand here in this House to support this bill. I would like to use this opportunity to acknowledge the 27,800 registered charities in New Zealand and all their volunteers for the amazing job they do.

In the past 12 months, I have visited a range of charity groups in Auckland. Many charities are struggling, not only with reduced financial support but also with the challenges of recruiting volunteers to sell tickets and collect donations on the streets. They often emphasise just how important it is to ensure Government does everything it can to ensure these charities can fund-raise effectively and efficiently. We have listened. Our Minister has listened.

This bill allows lotteries that raise funds for a charitable or commercial purpose to operate online permanently, and that allows charities a much-needed boost in their fund-raising efforts. This Government has a huge amount of respect for the work charities and their volunteers do. This bill is a bill that not only backs our charities but it means they have the tools they have asked for so that charities and their volunteers can spend more time on the front line, making a difference across the country. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the first reading of this bill, the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill. I’d like to acknowledge the Minister of Internal Affairs—thank you for bringing this bill to the attention of the House.

Although I have my own personal views about gambling, this is a situation where absolutely I support it because it’s going to be helping community organisations and charities. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Gambling (Definition of Remote Interactive Gambling) Amendment Bill be considered by the Governance and Administration Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Instruction to Governance and Administration Committee