
In a significant political development, New Zealand’s Green Party has voted alongside the current coalition government to support a new bill that would create a regulated online casino market.
The bill, which passed its first reading in Parliament with a conscience vote of 83 to 39, could allow licensed companies to become operational as soon as April 2026.
New Zealand’s Green Party unanimous support marked a shift away from the opposition Labour Party and Te Pāti Māori, who both voted against the bill.
The proposed legislation would allow for up to 15 licensed operators to run online casinos in the market, provided they implement effective age-verification systems and harm prevention processes as part of their license application.
Green Party Internal Affairs Minister Benjamin Doyle explained the party’s position.
We always want to support movements towards harm reduction. 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. It’s definitely not far enough, but we believe that going to select committee to hear from experts, the 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.
This update is the latest in a flurry of recent regulatory activity as New Zealand prepares to open its iGaming market.
The government recently unveiled a new nationwide gambling harm prevention strategy, posted the online casino licensing process for operator input, and introduced a new Racing Act that banned all offshore sports betting operators.