In New Zealand, one important government decision has seen the majority vote in favour of the coalition’s online casino bill, which aims to help players with gambling.

The law change has passed its first reading 83 to 39 in a conscience vote at Parliament, with the Green’ support and the bill was introduced by Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden.

Future plans include introducing 15 licences for online casinos, which would require companies to provide a harm prevention strategy and data showing past compliance and online casinos would need an age verification system to ban under-18s, contribute 1.24 percent of profits to a levy, and abide by advertising restrictions.

Any companies found guilty of breaking the rules would face fines of up to $5m and the minister has said New Zealand-based online casinos would get no preferential treatment in obtaining licences.

Speaking in a statement, Van Velden said the bill would seek to protect New Zealanders who gambled online, and the bill would impose regulations on the currently unregulated market.

“The most important part of this bill is protecting New Zealanders who enjoy gambling online by introducing robust safety measures for licensed operators. The bill will now proceed to select committee, and I would encourage interested New Zealanders to have their say when public submissions open,” van Velden said.

The Greens’ internal affairs spokesperson Benjamin Doyle told RNZ the party wanted to bring the issue to select committee with the aim of convincing the coalition parties to make significant changes.

“We always want to support movements towards harm reduction. So with online gambling, it’s totally unregulated at the moment, and we see this as a very small step in the right direction to enact harm reduction techniques,” they said.

“It’s definitely not far enough, but we believe that going to select committee to hear from experts, community, people with lived experience of online gambling harm, and advocacy groups may be able to help us to inform changes and amendments and improvements to this legislation that will actually enact harm reduction.”

Doyle also added that the Greens wanted to ensure 100 percent of the funding recouped from the moves would go back to harm reduction.

“There needs to be extremely high levels of transparency around where that funding is going, that revenue is going, and my ideal would be that 100 percent of the revenue goes towards community harm reduction… it shouldn’t be going towards the back pockets.”

In late-June, Van Velden confirmed that an online casino gambling bill had been submitted to government and the new system will legalise online casino advertising for approved operators – which came just days after banning offshore gambling operators.

The wider picture is focused on the broader regulatory overhaul, which will aim to increase financial returns to domestic racing and sporting bodies while minimising gambling-related harm, and this widespread change will certainly be felt in the coming months.