So it was for Taieri Labour MP Ingrid Leary on Wednesday, who spent the morning in the House on a steady grind accumulating chips, only to blow the lot of them in the afternoon when going all-in during Question Time.
Parliament sat under extended hours this week, so Wednesday dawned bright and early for MPs with the intestinal fortitude to rigorously scrutinise the Online Casino Gambling Bill.
As the law stands, casinos and other gambling outlets have to return a portion of the profits to the community. That requirement was not carried over for new licence-holders in the initial iteration of the Bill, something which Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden, smelling the political winds, has said she will address.
However, there were still many more avenues that the Opposition could explore, as Leary demonstrated during a laborious morning of questioning.
She kicked off by probing the issue which has most concerned the various charities which tackle gambling harm: will more outlets for gambling therefore lead to more gambling harm?
Van Velden made the not unreasonable point in reply that there were already thousands of unregulated companies which people could use to gamble online, and that what the government was doing was place that competition inside a regulated market.
That was all very well, but Leary still did not quite understand — and she would be far from the only person — how increasing gambling within this soon-to-be-regulated market was going to decrease harm?
The key, van Velden replied, was the limitation to just 15 licences: "If you went too low and made it a smaller regulated market, the real trade-off there is that people who do want to gamble online — where it is legal and they should be able to — would have less competition, less choice, and, therefore, there would be more ability or more desire to use the black or unregulated market. Putting 15 companies into a regulated market makes for a safer market."
Well, it might well be safer, but that didn’t really answer Leary’s question about whether there would be less or more harm in that safer market ... which was why soon afterwards Leary was back again to ask the same thing in a different way.
"I can see from a note on 16 January — official advice to Minister van Velden — there’s a whole lot of things here around revenue focus of the briefing that she was given," Leary said.
"There were discussions around advertising regulations; there was advertising discussed prior to harm minimisation; there were consumer protections discussed but there really wasn’t any discussion until much later on — I think it was around March — that the harm-minimisation piece came into play."
Furthermore, Leary wanted to know what multi-year licences would be allocated rather than licences for a shorter period to check any harm issues were being addressed, why there is nothing in the expression of interest process about the track record of a licence applicant on harm minimisation, and why harm prevention and minimisation did not have greater weighing on the assessment of an application.
"With managing regulatory complexity and cost, harm minimisation is a core purpose of the Bill, and operators will have to comply with harm minimisation regulations," van Velden replied.
There was very much more besides, and all in all it was not a bad morning’s work by Leary: there are plenty of questions to be answered about this Bill and she asked plenty of them.
However, things started to go badly awry in the afternoon when Leary stood to ask Question Nine of Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey, which — inspired by the newly released Counselling Workforce Report — related to unaffordable counselling costs and waiting times for mental healthcare.
"Our mental health plan is working," Doocey trumpeted. "We’re delivering faster access to support and more frontline workers: 83% of Kiwis are now accessing primary mental health support within one week; 82% of Kiwis are now accessing specialist mental health support within three weeks. The frontline mental health workforce has grown by 11% since coming into government. The child and adolescent mental health workforce has grown by 19%."
Dissatisfied, Leary took a point of order, that her question was about unaffordable counselling costs and Doocey had not addressed the question.
"Well, I think he did address the question by talking about availability of services, which, if it’s being taken up, might translate to cost," the speaker said, before adding: "The minister may make an extra comment."
It turned out the minister might very much like to make an extra comment.
"The question also mentioned access, which I answered, and concerns, and I do have a concern," Doocey said, "because the premise of this question is about reprioritising public mental health funding into private health providers. I’m concerned for her — her colleagues don’t know that, and they’ll have questions for her after this Question Time."
"That’s what happens when you have a point of order that goes awry," the speaker noted, accompanied by jeering from the government side of the House.
To her credit, Leary ploughed on and tried to rally herself: "Why should someone who can afford private counselling be able to get help quickly while someone relying on funded support can be left waiting months," she asked.
"Ah, she’s bit confused there, because the premise of the report was, actually, that for private counsellors, the cost was going up, resulting in delays for people going private, which is quite contrary to that question," Doocey happily responded.
Leary gave it one last try, asking if mental healthcare shouldn’t be available for people who need help, not just those who can afford it?
A fair point, but one which gave Doocey yet another chance to push the government’s barrow.
"The irony here is that we are talking about counsellors, and that member and her team rallied when this government committed $24million directly to fund 800 more counsellors on Gumboot Friday to deliver to 15,000 young people more access and support. We’re delivering for counsellors too."
As a wise man one said, you’ve gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them.
