Preliminary results of the New Zealand election are giving the National Party a coalition majority. The Nats have promised to urgently change gambling laws. As part of their pre-election promises, 5% of their proposed Budget would be funded by online gambling. The Nats aim to have all online gambling operators register for taxation in NZ – or be blocked.
New Zealand laws around online gambling are soon to change.
©AidanHowe/Pixabay
Waiting for Votes
Though the official count hasn’t been declared yet, already everyone is counting on the National Party to team up and form a majority. Creating a coalition government with the ACT Party alone could give the Nats enough votes in parliament to push through whatever they want. The final numbers are expected to come in early November. A by-election in late November, due to the death of a candidate, will create an extra seat in parliament.
There will be 122 members of parliament, rather than the usual 121. Importantly, this increases how many votes are needed to create a majority. 62 votes to pass changes will be needed, one more than usual. This has become an issue because the number of Nats and ACT candidates (who will most likely become members of parliament after the final count) is currently sitting at 61. Support from another right-wing party could be needed to push Bills through in parliament, the NZ First Party.
Changes to Gambling Laws
The National Party made some big promises about online gambling before the election. They said they would change any laws necessary as a matter of urgency. But what does this actually look like? NZ law calls online gambling, remote interactive gambling. At the moment only The Lotteries Commission, the Racing Board and some non-commercial societies can provide and advertise online gambling in New Zealand. This definition, of who can provide remote interactive gambling, would need to be changed.
“Rather than simply closing a loophole, quite a number of sections of the Gambling Act – and other laws – would need to be changed.”
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The online gambling industry catering to New Zealand is increasingly lucrative. So a lot of people have an interest in what changes would be made to the Gambling Act. The previous Labour government had tentative plans to give a monopoly over NZ online gaming to the Entain-run TAB. This would have involved filtering (blocking) any IP addresses of websites providing online gambling to New Zealanders living in their home country. Now that the TAB monopoly is off the table, new ideas are coming to the fore.
At the moment, there is around NZ$4 million being garnered annually from some overseas-based online gambling by the NZ government. It’s a “point of consumption charge”. But the Nats want to be paid Goods and Services Tax (GST) by overseas operators. To do that, those companies would need to become registered in New Zealand and subject to New Zealand laws and tax system. Those overseas operators would become NZ-based.
So What’s the Difference?
So currently, the only difference between the previous and current government’s plan is – how many players would get a slice of the pie. The previous government wanted to give a monopoly to TAB NZ / Entain, and block all other providers of online gambling services. The current government wants online gambling providers to register in New Zealand, and says it will block (filter) all those who won’t.
The National’s plan suits SkyCity, a major player in the New Zealand and Australia casino scene. In fact, the numbers used in the National Party’s Federal Budget, were from a proposal submitted to government by SkyCity Entertainment Group. This tipped people off that the Nats were sympathetic to SkyCity not wanting to be left out of the online gambling pie. SkyCity currently has an online casino based in Malta.
The intriguing part of the puzzle is, will the newly elected government open-up who can offer online gambling services? Will it really be an open playing field, with competition encouraged – aligned to the principles of the right-wing politicians who will be in power. Or will they favouritise entities, like SkyCity, who already have a strong economic presence in New Zealand’s casino industry? And will the ACT and NZ First parties even co-operate and let the law changes through? We’ll all find out before July 1st, 2024, the date the Nats promised to have it all done and dusted.
