Locke Keith: Major Events Management Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLocke Keith: Major Events Management Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 August 2007. Volume:641;Page:11385. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEITH LOCKE (Green): No argument has yet been raised to justify the anti-scalping provision in this bill. I ask Parliament to think about the precedent that it sets. Essentially it sets a precedent that the State can control second-hand markets and that it can control people who are making a profit in a second-hand market. Why do we need to go down that track? I ask someone in this Chamber to explain whether there is such a huge problem with the distribution of tickets by the organisers of sporting events that say 1000 tickets end up in the hands of one person and that person makes a huge profit out of them. If that is the case surely the organisers would improve the distribution of tickets the next time around. There is no problem that really needs to be addressed here.The Commerce Committee added a provision which is the heavy-handed thing that Richard Worth talked about. The select committee was worried that at the edge of the clean zones someone may stand on private property and trade a few items from a competing provider—that is a provider who is competing with the goods of an official sponsor may trade off his or her own front lawn—and said that a provision needed to be brought in to control that. Why do we need to get as heavy-handed as that? Why can the major event organisers not just control things in their own stadium? They are quite entitled to do that. Why do we need this legislation? Why do we have to have a 5 kilometre clean transport route?Emirates Airline which is an official sponsor of the Rugby World Cup in France is of course backed by the same people who are trying to take over Auckland International Airport our key transport hub. The same outfit that is behind Emirates Airline is behind the Dubai firm that is trying to take over our international airport. If Emirates Airline sponsors the Rugby World Cup again in 2011 do we really want Air New Zealand to pay a fine of $150000 if it happens to have a sign 4.5 kilometres out from Eden Parkalong the declared clean transport route? Why do we need to go down that track? New Zealanders will think it is stupid. In fact the Kiwi spirit is that if we are ordered around we come back in a satirical way. So all kinds of people in their Tui T-shirts or whatever else they may be wearing will try to stick it up the bureaucrats. This Parliament is giving powers to those bureaucrats to jump on the rights of people to do what they want.I do not think the argument for that measure has been made. Someone is just saying that because the big overseas advertisers say we must do this therefore we must. It was not a requirement in order to get the right to host the Rugby World Cup. When we got that right nothing came to this Parliament to say that if we got that right we would have to pass this legislation. It was only a year later that we were told we needed to do this. Obviously some of the big advertisers tapped someone on the shoulder and said we had to do this or our future might be in doubt. I do not think we want to bow down to those advertisers in that way.The bill contains a number of onerous provisions. As I said there is the anti-scalping provision. I do not have a particular amendment on that but I think we should be against that provision. I do have two specific sets of amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 138 in my name. One is to knock out the clean transport routes and the other one is to knock out pitch invasion. Again no one has really answered me as to why we need to have a whole new offence for pitch invasion and why it could not be handled as it has been in the past by imprisonment under the disorderly behaviour offence. It is very bad lawmaking to bring a whole new offence when it is unnecessary. Exactly the same behaviour can be caught under an existing offence with in practice the application of a lower penalty. Sure both the offences of pitch invasion and of disorderly behaviour have a maximum penalty of a 3-month prison sentence. But when one looks back through the cases at the application of prison sentences for disorderly behaviour one sees that what was behind the crime was often very serious and involved provoking violence or being involved in violence or another crime. Simply wandering on to a football field is not covered and it has never been even thought of as being covered by the disorderly behaviour offence.