The Government made a u-turn on their bill concerning online gambling, and operators are now required to hand over four percent of profits to charities and community groups.
This is in line with the requirements licensed gambling platforms - such as Lotto, TAB and the pokies - have to work under.
Cycling NZ chair Martin Snedden joined D'Arcy to discuss.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the sports Talk podcast with Dancy Wildergrave
from News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We go now to a governmental news. What they government
are up to? Brook van Dervelden and the government. They've
announced that because they listened to New Zealanders, because they
are given the opportunity to post submissions around this new bill,
they're going to be introducing community funding returns through this
(00:37):
online casino gambling bill. Right they announced that online casinos
will be funding local sports and community groups with an
increase of four percent duty that's been ring fenced for this.
So this is a change, remember from the innational bill
from a couple of months ago. Jason Pine on Weekend
Sport had Martin Sneden on talking about this because none
(01:01):
of the profits in the previous bill would be shared
with sport and community groups even though they receive funding
from the tab from lotto, from pokys and like in
New Zealand. So Marnsteden form a black Cat currently represents
a community sport collective covers fifty national sporting organizations, eighteen
regional groups as well. He joins us now on the
(01:24):
back what is good news. Look, welcome to the program.
Marn't great to catch up again. So Brooke van Dervelden
and the government have essentially acquiesced to what your wants,
the communities wants, after announcing that online casinos will be
funding local sports and community groups. This is a good piece.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Of news today, Darcy. Yeah, it is good news at
a high level. I mean, it's really good that the
minister has said that they've listened to overwhelming feedback they
received from not just the sporting sector but community organizations
that benefit enormously from money that comes from the pokies
(02:03):
who needed to be heard and they word heard. And
good on the government for backtracking changing their minds. At
a high level, I'm still wanting to see some more
detail about this, but it's a hell of a step
forward today.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Could you summarize what occurred because it sounds to me
like this was whipped through reasonably quickly without giving anybody
any information, and you guys got wind of it went
hold on, this has got to stop. So what's the
primary issue? What happened and what have they done in
the last couple of months and how's that worked.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
So it's a piece of legislation designed to regulate the
online casino gambling market which hit the moment is completely
unregulated and it's about eight hundred billion in size at
the moment, so it's grown quickly. And so the government
quite rightly's said we've got to get legislation around this
to regulate it and to make it clean. So they
(03:02):
took steps to draft up a bill. There was zero
console with affected community groups, including sporting groups, as they
went through the drafting process. We only had a chance
to enter into this discussion once the draft bill had
had its first reading in Parliament and the public submission
(03:22):
process opened up. Well. As soon as that opened up,
the sports sector got advocate activated. In the end, within
a period of about two weeks or so, we managed
to get about five thousand submissions in in front of
the Select Committee, and then you know, dozens and dozens
of people from the sports sector and from other community
(03:43):
organizations fronted up, talked to the Select Committee, told them
how important it was the use they made of the
money they got from the pokies, and I think really
convincingly demonstrated that if the money is dragged away by
this new legislation without any of the online casino money
(04:03):
going to community organizations, then the whole of that set
is going to get wet, incredibly hot, and that is
a bad thing for New Zealand society. And so you know,
the point was really rammed home. And so the government
today has announced that the backtrack, they're going to give
some of the money to community and probably the best
(04:25):
thing for me is that they've said that in two
years time we'll have once the legislation has been in
place for a couple of years, we'll have a look
at it. We'll see what the impact has been on
the pokey revenues and on community funding. And I'm assuming
the implication mean is that if they find that things
haven't gone well from the pokey side of things, that
(04:47):
they'll do something about the percentage they're taking from the
online operators to compensate.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Okay, so draw the line between the pokeys and online gambling.
Is one of them going to eat dramatically into the other?
Is there information around that? Why are these two interlinked? Martin?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, Well, the answer is our advocacy is yes, that
that is what will happen, is that online will gradually
eat up the land based pokies. Our argument has been
there are examples of where this has happened offshore, and
even with the New Zealand with how once tab started
(05:25):
making online options available to its customers, how the customers
walked away from the land based TAB options and have
gone for online. So we think there is a convincing case.
Government has consistently said to us they don't agree. So
(05:45):
what they've done is they've said, and it's quite a
pragmatic solution. They've said, let's use the next two years
once this registration legislation is in place, and we'll actually
be able to look backwards then and see what the
impact has been. In the meantime, you will get money
from the online gambling operators. Well that's good start, and
(06:07):
so to be honest, I actually agree with that part
of the solution. They've come up with.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Distribution of the money, the percentage of what's that set out,
and how does that get to not only sports but
community groups too which also benefit from the pokey So
I'm presuming you're a sports spokesman, but it covers the
whole gamut of people that need that money. So how
is that led through, how is that distributed? How big
(06:33):
is this?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So that's the part that wasn't talked about in the
announcement today, and I am really interested to see what
reaction we're getting from government to advocacy because what we
have said is one of the fantastic things about the
Pokey money is it gets right to the frontline community.
(06:55):
Organizations are able to access that money direct. They don't
have to go through any other sort of national bodies
or regional bodies. The clubs can go straight to the
Pokey trusts and apply and get the money, so there's
no clipping the ticket as things go by. We don't
know yet what government think. Our advice is, why don't
(07:19):
you actually use the existing Pokey system to distribute the money.
It's tried and true. There might be some improvements that
can be made to it, but it's there and buy
and large, it's working, so why not use that. I
don't know what they're thinking about this at the moment.
I would hate them to come up with a distribution
system that is slow, that is based on ideology that
(07:46):
is held by the organization that's giving out the money
instead of actually handing it out for what is exactly
needed by frontline community. And I hate the idea that
as they do that they charge a wapping great administration
fee and actually instead of just you know, a feeling
minor clipping of the ticket as the classroom system. So
(08:07):
you know, that's an ongoing conversation to Arcy we still
have to have with government.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So the government have turned things around. It's looking very
positive for the community groups, so the national sporting organizations.
Before we leave you, Martin Steeden, as always, thanks for
your time. What are the key fishalks here? What are
you looking at over the next month to a couple
of years before they relook at the situation. What alarms
you of anything?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Well, firstly, they've still got legislation to get through, and
there's other other parts of the legislation that are going
to need to be looked at, I think, but they'll
probably do that quite quickly. I guess what I'm looking
to see is that, let's know about the distribution. Let's
actually try and convert the percentage they were talking about
(08:52):
today into what is likely to be the dollar value
and make sure that over the next two years that
money gets out to frontline community without the clip the
ticket being clipped too much. And then let's prepare for
a decent review two years time, where I think there'll
be evidence on the table that are able to be
used to actually improve what they've announced today.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
For more from sports talk, listen live to news talks
they'd be from seven pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the sports Talk podcast with Dancy Wildergrave
from News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We go now to a governmental news. What they government
are up to? Brook van Dervelden and the government. They've
announced that because they listened to New Zealanders, because they
are given the opportunity to post submissions around this new bill,
they're going to be introducing community funding returns through this
(00:37):
online casino gambling bill. Right they announced that online casinos
will be funding local sports and community groups with an
increase of four percent duty that's been ring fenced for this.
So this is a change, remember from the innational bill
from a couple of months ago. Jason Pine on Weekend
Sport had Martin Sneden on talking about this because none
(01:01):
of the profits in the previous bill would be shared
with sport and community groups even though they receive funding
from the tab from lotto, from pokys and like in
New Zealand. So Marnsteden form a black Cat currently represents
a community sport collective covers fifty national sporting organizations, eighteen
regional groups as well. He joins us now on the
(01:24):
back what is good news. Look, welcome to the program.
Marn't great to catch up again. So Brooke van Dervelden
and the government have essentially acquiesced to what your wants,
the communities wants, after announcing that online casinos will be
funding local sports and community groups. This is a good piece.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Of news today, Darcy. Yeah, it is good news at
a high level. I mean, it's really good that the
minister has said that they've listened to overwhelming feedback they
received from not just the sporting sector but community organizations
that benefit enormously from money that comes from the pokies
(02:03):
who needed to be heard and they word heard. And
good on the government for backtracking changing their minds. At
a high level, I'm still wanting to see some more
detail about this, but it's a hell of a step
forward today.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Could you summarize what occurred because it sounds to me
like this was whipped through reasonably quickly without giving anybody
any information, and you guys got wind of it went
hold on, this has got to stop. So what's the
primary issue? What happened and what have they done in
the last couple of months and how's that worked.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
So it's a piece of legislation designed to regulate the
online casino gambling market which hit the moment is completely
unregulated and it's about eight hundred billion in size at
the moment, so it's grown quickly. And so the government
quite rightly's said we've got to get legislation around this
to regulate it and to make it clean. So they
(03:02):
took steps to draft up a bill. There was zero
console with affected community groups, including sporting groups, as they
went through the drafting process. We only had a chance
to enter into this discussion once the draft bill had
had its first reading in Parliament and the public submission
(03:22):
process opened up. Well. As soon as that opened up,
the sports sector got advocate activated. In the end, within
a period of about two weeks or so, we managed
to get about five thousand submissions in in front of
the Select Committee, and then you know, dozens and dozens
of people from the sports sector and from other community
(03:43):
organizations fronted up, talked to the Select Committee, told them
how important it was the use they made of the
money they got from the pokies, and I think really
convincingly demonstrated that if the money is dragged away by
this new legislation without any of the online casino money
(04:03):
going to community organizations, then the whole of that set
is going to get wet, incredibly hot, and that is
a bad thing for New Zealand society. And so you know,
the point was really rammed home. And so the government
today has announced that the backtrack, they're going to give
some of the money to community and probably the best
(04:25):
thing for me is that they've said that in two
years time we'll have once the legislation has been in
place for a couple of years, we'll have a look
at it. We'll see what the impact has been on
the pokey revenues and on community funding. And I'm assuming
the implication mean is that if they find that things
haven't gone well from the pokey side of things, that
(04:47):
they'll do something about the percentage they're taking from the
online operators to compensate.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Okay, so draw the line between the pokeys and online gambling.
Is one of them going to eat dramatically into the other?
Is there information around that? Why are these two interlinked? Martin?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, Well, the answer is our advocacy is yes, that
that is what will happen, is that online will gradually
eat up the land based pokies. Our argument has been
there are examples of where this has happened offshore, and
even with the New Zealand with how once tab started
(05:25):
making online options available to its customers, how the customers
walked away from the land based TAB options and have
gone for online. So we think there is a convincing case.
Government has consistently said to us they don't agree. So
(05:45):
what they've done is they've said, and it's quite a
pragmatic solution. They've said, let's use the next two years
once this registration legislation is in place, and we'll actually
be able to look backwards then and see what the
impact has been. In the meantime, you will get money
from the online gambling operators. Well that's good start, and
(06:07):
so to be honest, I actually agree with that part
of the solution. They've come up with.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Distribution of the money, the percentage of what's that set out,
and how does that get to not only sports but
community groups too which also benefit from the pokey So
I'm presuming you're a sports spokesman, but it covers the
whole gamut of people that need that money. So how
is that led through, how is that distributed? How big
(06:33):
is this?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So that's the part that wasn't talked about in the
announcement today, and I am really interested to see what
reaction we're getting from government to advocacy because what we
have said is one of the fantastic things about the
Pokey money is it gets right to the frontline community.
(06:55):
Organizations are able to access that money direct. They don't
have to go through any other sort of national bodies
or regional bodies. The clubs can go straight to the
Pokey trusts and apply and get the money, so there's
no clipping the ticket as things go by. We don't
know yet what government think. Our advice is, why don't
(07:19):
you actually use the existing Pokey system to distribute the money.
It's tried and true. There might be some improvements that
can be made to it, but it's there and buy
and large, it's working, so why not use that. I
don't know what they're thinking about this at the moment.
I would hate them to come up with a distribution
system that is slow, that is based on ideology that
(07:46):
is held by the organization that's giving out the money
instead of actually handing it out for what is exactly
needed by frontline community. And I hate the idea that
as they do that they charge a wapping great administration
fee and actually instead of just you know, a feeling
minor clipping of the ticket as the classroom system. So
(08:07):
you know, that's an ongoing conversation to Arcy we still
have to have with government.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So the government have turned things around. It's looking very
positive for the community groups, so the national sporting organizations.
Before we leave you, Martin Steeden, as always, thanks for
your time. What are the key fishalks here? What are
you looking at over the next month to a couple
of years before they relook at the situation. What alarms
you of anything?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Well, firstly, they've still got legislation to get through, and
there's other other parts of the legislation that are going
to need to be looked at, I think, but they'll
probably do that quite quickly. I guess what I'm looking
to see is that, let's know about the distribution. Let's
actually try and convert the percentage they were talking about
(08:52):
today into what is likely to be the dollar value
and make sure that over the next two years that
money gets out to frontline community without the clip the
ticket being clipped too much. And then let's prepare for
a decent review two years time, where I think there'll
be evidence on the table that are able to be
used to actually improve what they've announced today.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
For more from sports talk, listen live to news talks
they'd be from seven pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio
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