The person who highlighted this to me had not seen my post on the Invercargill City Charitable Trust but I can see the correlation between them. Submissions on the Bill close on June 21 and the Gaming Trusts are actively promoting the downfalls of the set up proposed by the Maori Party ( supported by National to the public hearing stage).
I haven’t put a lot of thought into the reduction of venues in certain areas or even confirmed whether the website’s claims are correct, i.e,
It is interesting to note that funding for the treatment of problem gambling was recently cut by the Ministry of Health – due to a lack of demand.
My initial concern is this:
The majority (80%) of any donations generated from any machines that might remain would be controlled and distributed by councils and where applicable community board appointed committees.
The Explanatory notes of the legislation say: (underlining my emphasis)
However only a small proportion of the pokie gamblers’ losses are distributed in grants for community benefit back into the same communities that generated them. This is because the majority of the gamblers’ losses go to pay machine site rentals, machine maintenance, trustee fees for pokie trust members, and other administrative costs. Gambling losses are occasionally siphoned off into corrupt purposes and other rorts; go into paying taxes; and into grants made to organisations based in other local authorities altogether, sometimes even in the other Island, or to national bodies.
They better show some evidence, it’s not the impression I have of gaming trusts but am sure everything is open to abuse BUT they think handing the role over to councils and community boards is the answer! Central government have other avenues to remedy those issues. Who are those taxes going to? Government. Trustee fees? Could be remedied by Constitution requirements or Remuneration Authority. Corruption and rorts? Do they think that doesn’t happen in central or local government? What about the Trustee’s Act or THE POLICE? Where the money goes is already declared in newspapers and online by law. I haven’t seen any that distribute outside of their area, be interesting to see some examples of this. Small proportion? Legislation already imposes how much needs to be distributed doesn’t it? Transparency resolves a lot of issues too. A LGOIMA type arrangement for all gaming trusts would ensure transparency if the public have an independent body for complaints and concerns (make sure local government has the same too!)
Here’s their idea:
Fourth, this Bill also phases out the “pokie trusts” or corporate societies as the distributors of community benefit money from pokie machines, and within a year’s time passes over responsibility for these distributions to special committees of local authorities with a majority of representation from community organisations, modelled on the Creative New Zealand creative communities fund committees and the former Hillary Commission local committees. The creative communities fund committees in particular already make full use of the provisions of clause 31(3) of Schedule 7 of the Local Government Act 2002 which permit councils to appoint members to council committees and subcommittees who are not members of the council. Every local authority in New Zealand is granted money from Creative New Zealand on a per head of population basis and distributes it through a council committee which has one or more councillors on it but a majority of whose members are drawn from knowledgeable people from arts and cultural groups in that district. This Bill would set up a parallel system to grant money to community, social-service, iwi, and sporting groups in their district on a fair, informed, transparent, and accountable basis.
I don’t know if the Creative NZ set up works or not but question whether having people from the relevant sectors and local government is the right way to go. Wouldn’t there be more conflicts arise? In a small town like Bluff, the people on the committee would face constant ‘attention’ from those wanting to obtain funding. The conflicts register alone would be enormous!
Naive pricks! On one hand government are trying to get councils to focus on core issues then they present this sort of bill. More funding for pet projects?
via mobile 08:33 am May 25 2012
