This Supplementary Order Paper proposes amendments that would:

• ensure commission-based payments are not made to any venue operators. Commission payments would tend to incentivise operators to increase the amount of betting on their poker machines, either to increase the profits from their business or to sustain it when its other business activities became unprofitable. This would likely increase gambling-related harm arising from the use of the machines on their premises:

• ensure the term of approved licences for both venues and operators would not be greater than the current maximum of 18 months. There is strong evidence that relatively few venues are carrying out their harm minimisation and host responsibility obligations adequately. The Department of Internal Affairs’ “secret shopper” exercise demonstrated this, with 101 of 102 venues visited failing to meet their obligations. Until this situation changes it would risk more gambling-related harm to give any operators or venues extended licence periods:

• require the introduction of specified effective pre-commitment and other harm minimisation systems as a mandatory condition in all operators’ licences. This would help and empower poker machine gamblers to have valuable knowledge about, and to determine and control, their amount and extent of gambling before they entered the potentially seductive atmosphere of the gambling venue. The wording reflects that in section 314(1)(ga) of the Gambling Act 2003, introduced in the Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Act 2013, which is an authority potentially to introduce such regulations that has not yet been exercised. The amendment in this Supplementary Order Paper would require such appropriate specific conditions in all future operators’ licences.