Chairperson, hon Minister and hon members, you must forgive the hon Douglas because he wasn't actually present in most cases when it was explained to us how interactive gambling would work.
Chair, the National Gambling Amendment Bill seeks to establish a lawful basis for the provision, regulation and control of interactive gambling within our country. I wasn't going to read my speech, but just so that you can get what it is really about, I am going to go through the whole speech.
We need to provide authorised forms of electronic communication for the purpose of interactive gambling. In so doing, we create a space to provide authorised interactive gambling in games systems and methods.
The main purpose of the Bill deals specifically with the exclusion of person-to-person betting exchange. Therefore, the Bill enhances the proper identification of players. Furthermore, it needs to record the identity, address and account information of players for protection purposes.
In-order control systems include the plan of organisation and procedures that are dealing with the safeguarding of assets and the reliability of financial records. This emphasises the fact that there must be no segregation or incompatible functions so that no employee is in a position to perpetrate and conceal errors or irregularities in the normal course of their duties.
One of the major strategies that are used in each control system is logistical, physical and information security. This includes approved programmes, applications, operating systems and databases, in order to be able to ensure data integrity, accuracy and completeness of data, particularly with regard to using credit cards. It strengthens the fact that there is one aspect of protecting people from being exploited by this system. We must reflect clearly that, in this country, we must have laws that protect our people from exploitation. We must realise that the main purpose of having these laws in gambling is to eliminate the involvement of people in gambling.
We have people who are already victims of gambling - their lives are destroyed by gambling - so we are fighting criminal activities that are taking place through gambling in South Africa in order to protect the next generation. In so doing, the whole process of licensing must be transparent, fair and open to allow new players in the industry.
In essence, this Bill's main focus can be looked at from an angle where it looks upon prevention of organised crime and puts more emphasis on the protection of our constitutional democracy against terrorism. This Bill needs to look, in particular, at capacitating or guarding socioeconomic development trends in this country in all spheres of government for economic development purposes.
I must state clearly that, as the ANC, we are clear at the end of the day that there are challenges that would need for us to be alert, act consciously, and have political management over them. Let me reflect that there are three fundamental challenges that we need to give more attention to. We need to look at the role this Bill will play with regard to economic development, facilitation of technological upgrading and sustainable human settlement and its impact on the transport system.
In conclusion, the above-mentioned challenges are not something new. What we need to do is to strengthen our muscle within the economic cluster to facilitate co-operation with regard to the various economic challenges. There is also a need for greater co-operation between government departments to deal with these matters in a progressive manner.
It has been one of the ANC's major strengths to deal with major challenges within our society in a constructive manner. We have been successful and managed, in doing so, to progressively bring about a strong growing economy in order to facilitate development in different spheres of our government. As the ANC, we support the National Gambling Amendment Bill. Thank you. [Applause.]