Some "reforms"

Yesterday the Maori Party's Te Ururoa Flavell explained his contentment with National gutting his Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill by saying that they would be announcing some reforms today. So what are these "reforms"? A tiny increase in the amount pokies must return to the community:

Gambling trusts will have to return more pokie machine proceeds to the community under law changes announced by Government today.

[...]

At present, gambling societies or trusts which redistributed pokie proceeds had to return a minimum of 37 per cent of this money to sports groups and other community organisations.

Mr Tremain said he had proposed that this threshold increase, initially to 40 per cent and later to between 43 and 45 per cent.

An extra 3%? Whoop-di-shit. Flavell's bill called for 80%, not 40, and for those profits to go directly to the communities they were gouged from, rather than being spent on sports clubs on the other side of town (or the other end of the country). And even that minimal gain has a nasty clawback: longer licences for operators.

This isn't "reform" - its a sick joke. And the Maori Party's support of it is even sicker.