This week sees the return of Maarten Quivooy to his substantive role as General Manager Regulatory Services. I have enjoyed filling in for him over the past five weeks, getting a broader focus across a variety of regimes. I’m now back in my role of Director Gambling Compliance Group and I’m looking forward to a busy few months with a range of activities taking place.
Lifting performance lies at the heart of our work, ensuring sustainable community funding while preventing and minimising harm.
This is why we are working on a number of initiatives which have a clear focus on encouraging better performance, particularly in the area of harm minimisation. Our approach is to work closely with the Class 4 sector, including societies, venues, clubs and gambling service providers, to ensure that this work is developed with an understanding of the sector’s context and realities.
This is seeing us increase the number of engagements with stakeholders as we develop new resources and new approaches to traditional regulatory activities such as venue inspections. I recognise the time and effort that goes into working with us, and the value that this input has towards making sure our work is fit-for-purpose.
The table below gives you an idea of what’s happening and what’s coming up.
|
Product |
Timeframe |
|
Gamble Host Pack resource1 |
Embedding |
|
Consistent, outcome focused, harm minimisation policy template |
Rolling out May/June 2017 |
|
Venue staff training package |
Rolling out May/June 2017 |
|
Overhaul of venue inspections2 |
Engagement and Pilot June 2017 |
|
Multi Venue Exclusion Implementation Working Group (cross sector)3 |
Ongoing |
|
Best Practice Licences4 |
In development. Public consultation open until Friday 19 May 2017 |
At the same time we are about to begin a series of meetings with those operators who were involved in our mystery shopper exercise and I’m looking forward to discussing the results. A cross-sector report is due to be completed in about a month’s time.
There have, of course, also been reference group meetings regarding the Class 4 Gambling Review and the Best Practice Licences.
With all this going on our next regional sector forums will take place in October/November this year. This will also be after the upcoming election, so I'm sure there will be plenty of updates to share. If there are any burning issues you’d like to address with us before then please let me know.
Thank you again to all those who are engaging with us. Productive and positive relationships lead to smarter activity and performance, across the whole sector, including the way we work as the regulator.
1 A package of material to support venue staff and gamblers: http://gamblehostpack.choicenotchance.org.nz/
2 Venue inspections by DIA are being refreshed to introduce a more robust, risk-based approach to harm minimisation.
3 A cross sector group working on improvements to the MVE process
4 The intent of this work is to reward best practice operators with a three year licence, where best practice is defined by the Department as going above and beyond the legislation, focusing on customers and communities, regular reviewing and learning, and working with the Department to achieve its class 4 vision and objectives.
