Martin Snedden: Community sports need the extra funding

Submissions close tonight for the Online Casino Gambling Bill.

The community sports sector have banded together under the Community Sports Collective, and made a joint submission covering at least 1.67 million people. 

They're urging the Government to share the proceeds of online casino gambling with the community, in the same way they do with current grants. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'd be submissions close tonight for the online casino gambling bill.
The Community Sports Center banded together under the Community Sports
Collective and made a joint submission covering at least one
point sixty seven million people. Right now, pokes and physical
casinos have to share some of their profits with the community,
but under the new bill, online casinos currently won't have

(00:29):
to do the same. They're urging the government to share
the proceeds of online casino gambling with the community, and
the same they the way they do with grants. Leader
of the Community Sport Collective, Martin Snedden, joins me now, Martin,
good afternoon, Tom. I've seen the list of organizations you represent.
It's pretty comprehensive. One point six to seven million people.
No pressure, I guess, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well, I shows you how much this matters to the
sports sector. The submission I file was on behalf of
sixty four organizations, forty six of them what are called
national sporting organizations. So if you think of zeld Rugby
or New Zealand Credit, New Zealand Football, all of those
down to the little ones disculf New Zealand. But you know,

(01:14):
they're all totally in behind what we were saying, each
of them by the way or file their own submissions,
and a whole lot of them members or via submissions.
So when things close tonight, I'd be hugely surprised if
we don't get at least hundred submissions and all basically
same same thing, which is government. You've got to wake up.
You've actually got to recognize here that what you're doing

(01:35):
requires you, as part of a social contract with New Zealanders,
to actually ensure that some of the money out of
the online gambling goes to community.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
How much of the money has shifted because of online
gambling away from those traditional sort of gambling outlets.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
It's just moving gradually online and gambling has sort of
been around but not quite officially for say five years,
maybe a little bit longer. There's an unofficial market that's
already at about eight hundred million apparently. And what's happened
is that the money that sport gets primarily comes from
the class for trust the pokies. People would even know that,

(02:15):
and out of that is about three hundred and fifty
odd million a year that is distributed by those trusts
to community including sports. Sport gets about half, about one
hundred and seventy something million, and the rest goes to
other community organizations like arts and culture and health, and
there's a whole raft of them. They all need it.

(02:36):
So it's actually really fantastic what happens here and there
is the organizations receiving these they really do depend quite
a bit on them. It's not their sole income, but
they do have a real need for this sort of money.
And so if online gets regulated in New Zealand effectively legalized,

(02:57):
and just like every other part of our lives where
we are, it's ver easy to do things online and
these physically, then eventually what's going to happen is the
paky trust money is going to disappear. And unless there
is a replacement crafted within this new legislation, then these
organizations are stuffed.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Look, I would have thought that what you want and
other community organizations want is an irresistible argument. But what
response have you had? I mean seriously, I mean I
can't see any reason why why you wouldn't get what
you want, But what response have you had?

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well, I should take me around with me, Tom, Listen.
Truth is this this is my view. Okay, Cabinet when
they were signing off on the bill, the online Casino
Gambling Bill, did not have a clue that what they
were doing was potentially signing a death warrant for community

(03:53):
funding from Poky's. They wouldn't have known that. And the
reason they didn't know is that the government agency responsible
for briefing the Minister of Internal Affairs and for Cabinet
on this did not draw out the risk in any significance.
They went over the top of it quite quickly and

(04:15):
it basically just was not visible to cabinet ministers. Now
you're seeing around the cabinet table, there's a lot you're
dealing with, and unless it's actually put the affair in square,
it's not that hard to miss. But I cannot believe
now that we have put this into the public domain
that the likes of the PM mart Mitchell, whose Minister
of Sport, Christmaship, who loves sport, these guys are not

(04:39):
going to allow something to happen that ultimately will cause
such serious damage to sport and to other community organizations.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
There is a paradox here, isn't there. I don't know
what comment you can make on this because it's just
a fact of life. Because here we have community sport
and arts activities which we celebrate as healthy and positive
as funded by gambling losses often from people who struggle
with gambling and addiction and stuff.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
I have to mention it because we can't. The money's there,
so we got to utilize it. But it is a
strange paradox, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Oh totally it is. I hate gambling. I do not gamble.
I just just hate it. But it is there and
it's not going away. And you know, for fifty years
the government has grappled with us, and for fifty years,
what I call and what's commonly known as a social
contract between successive governments and the public is that we're

(05:36):
legalized gambling in certain ways. But one of the trade
offs is that part of the money is coming from
gambling will be put into good causes, yes, in community,
including sport. Okay, not a perfect solution, but it's not
a bad solution, and it has helped sport enormously, and

(05:57):
it's helped other community organizations.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
What are the whispers from when the cards are power
about and how well your submissions are going to be received.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
I think I think that's surprised to start with because
it just didn't have visibility, and I think that some
of them were a little bit annoyed that it didn't
have this visibility. Well embarrassed maybe, well, I mean, the
truth is they shouldn't be embarrassed if they haven't been
properly briefed. They just need to be quick enough, light

(06:30):
enough on their feet that now they know about it,
that they do something about it, and I personally I
think they will. The first the starting point here, tim
is look at something called the Gambling at two thousand
and three, and within that, right at the start, it
says it lists the principles or the purpose of the legislation,

(06:54):
and one of the key ones that says ensure moneys
go to community. Now, that's been something agreed between governments
and the public for fifty years since the Golden Ticket,
Golden Kening Ticket, and this time around it was just
totally and utterly ignored. And further than that, the fact

(07:16):
that it existed in the Gambling Act and other gambling
legislation was not brought to the attention to Cabinet and
so there was no, if you like, positive rejection of
that principle. It just is completely kept invisible and that's
what really annoys me. But anyway, what I think will
happen through this process, I think there'll be lots of
submissions tonight. I think the select committee process will draw

(07:40):
it up to the surface even more. I think the
government will quickly accept the principle, and then when the
robber hits the road, it's actually working out how to
do it because that's not absolutely straightforward, but that doesn't matter.
The first step is to get the principle agreed.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Just lastly, I mean, how obviously you're involved with sports.
We all know about your strand sport from quite a
few angles. But from what you're from your discussions with
the community organizations and sport in general, how short are
they of the funding that they need?

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Oh? How long speech strength? You know when you're running
these community organizations and remember we're totally talking about community
professional sports excluded from this discussion. Well, one way you
can judge it is that the number of applications for
funding that the class for trusts receive each year is

(08:34):
double the number they can approve, So the need is huge.
There was a major survey out last week which one
of the findings was a seventy two percent of sports
clubs are worried about their future sustainability financial sustainability. Another
stand in there was that in the last five years,
volunteer numbers in sport have decreased by twenty eight This

(08:56):
spent all of it's because of the pressure that comes
right on top of the sport to keep it going.
So you know, we've got to try abs to get
the government to listen and to do something positive. If
they really wanted to, they could stop looking at this
as as a pain to have us doing this and
actually look at it as a positive opportunity to really

(09:17):
set up funding a sport and community for a long
time going forward. But they can take that really positive
attitude into this, and I think we could come up
with something really special if the whole thing is about
them dragging their chain and us beating them up as
much as we can in order to try and get
hurt and to try and get some and that's a

(09:38):
really negative, dumb way to have to go about this.
This doesn't need that, it needs It needs positivity and
a vision about the future. That's what I'm hoping.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, good stuff, Oh well, good luck I mean, as
you heard, I think it's a no brainer for me.
But yeah, I appreciate your time, Martin, thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
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