Goff Phil: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 06 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14455. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): What the Government has tried to do with this legislation is frame the argument around whether or not we should have a convention centre. That is an argument in its own right. It is not what the debate on this bill the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill is about. There could well be a good argument for a convention centre but if you are going to set up a convention centre this is not the only way it is certainly not the best way and actually it is not an acceptable way to fund that convention centre. Labour does not oppose having a convention centre but we oppose the process and we oppose the implications and the consequences of the Government acting in the way that it has.What I object to first of all about this deal is that it was a dirty deal carried out by the Prime Minister in contravention of the ethical transparent open and fair processes that one would normally associate with the public sector. The Prime Minister did not take simply a casual approach to his involvement in this; he himself met twice with Skycity. He had his chief of staff meet with Skycity. His staff met on five occasions with Skycity and the Prime Minister issued an instruction. The instruction was to put on hold any dealings with other bidders for the convention centre until he worked out a dirty deal with Skycity. That is not proper. That is not correct. It is wrong. It is so wrong that the Deputy Auditor-General decided that she would hold an inquiry into how this was carried out.John Key breaking ethics again long before the report came out said: “This report will totally vindicate me.” That was the language that he used—“This report will totally vindicate me.” It did nothing of the sort. Instead the Deputy Auditor-General said that there were clear deficiencies on the part of Ministers and officials. She used very considered language but the meaning is very clear. Listen to this. The Deputy Auditor-General said that “… we do not consider that the evaluation process was transparent or even-handed.” That is the Deputy Auditor-General’s considered language. What it meant was that in effect she was saying that the Prime Minister was doing a dirty dealfor his cronies and that is exactly what this deal represents. It is a mark of shame on this Government.The second concern that I have about what this bill encompasses is that it binds this Parliament for 35 years. It gives special privileges to Skycity that will last until 2048. I warrant this: you will not be here in 2048 Mr Chairman. I will not be here. In fact there will not—Hon Trevor Mallard: I might be.Hon PHIL GOFF: Well maybe Trevor Mallard. He has incredible longevity. But I warrant this: there will not be a single member of this House in this Chamber while this deal continues to provide benefits to Skycity. There will not be any of the officials who are currently working here. It is unprecedented that a Government would enter into a deal that gives privileges for 35 years and tries to lock it in so that any future Parliament that looks back at this deal will say: “This is crazy. This cannot in any way be justified.” It makes it really hard for Parliament to get out of that deal. In fact it puts a financial penalty on the taxpayer when this contract is replaced as it most certainly needs to be.This Government will be remembered in the same way that Robert Muldoon is remembered for what he did about superannuation in 1976. This National Government will be remembered for a deal that was wrong a deal that was inappropriately negotiated a deal that was a millstone round the necks of New Zealanders and a deal that will cost them just to get out of it.I want to say that the critical clause in this bill is clause 6(2). It reads: “The regulatory concessions prevail if a regulatory concession is inconsistent with any provision of the gambling law and the application of the provision of the gambling law is modified accordingly.” That is very clear language that says that this dirty deal prevails over the provisions of the Gambling Act 2003 which will cover every other institution and individual that is involved in the business of gambling. This is a special deal for Skycity.But what I object to most about this is that it ignores the costs of gambling. I have got in my hand the regulatory impact statement. It says right up front in the beginning that “the potential impact this may have in increasing the incidence of problem gambling and its associated harm for New Zealand society …” is a key concern. On the front page it tries not to quantify that but it does it later on in the report. This is the impact of the deal that every one of those National members is seeking to impose on New Zealand. It makes this point in paragraph 85 of the regulatory impact statement by the Government’s own officials: “most of the money spent on gambling in New Zealand is spent on gaming machines and substantial proportions of it by people who play machines frequently. New Zealand studies have found that gaming machines are associated with harm more often than any other form of gambling.” There it is in black and white—a very clear statement that the Government is imposing on New Zealand another 230 gambling machines that its own officials have told it cause more harm than anything else. On top of that is the bonus of another 40 gambling tables.In section 91 of that report it does quantify the impact of that. As a result of this bill there will be more than 8000 New Zealanders who will suffer problems as a result of someone else’s gambling. It will have an impact. Mr Chairman you have seen it. Every member in this Chamber who has gone into an institution that offers gambling machines will have seen the poor pathetic people stuck on those machines for hour after hour as they spend the housekeeping money and they spend the money that they should be spending on their kids. Officials from the Ministry of Health and the Department of Internal Affairs said that it would have that sort of impact. In fact the Department of Internal Affairs said it would affect something like 6000 children.The great irony of this is that those people on the benches over there will be the first to condemn the unfortunate individuals who suffer from gambling addiction for spending their money and depriving their kids and then they will take away the benefits which will hurt the kids further as all the while they increase the millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars of profit that Skycity will make out of people who cannot afford it to fund Skycity and its exorbitant profits. If you want an international convention centre either it pays its own way or you put the bill on those who benefit most from it. You do not put the bill on the backs of those individuals who cannot afford to be gambling but who are trapped by the nature of the machines that are set up particularly to keep people feeding money into them. It is rank hypocrisy to condemn the victims of gambling while you reach dirty deals that increase the number of machines that increase the incidence of problem gambling. That is what the officials say about that.The other point that I want to make about this is that the economic benefits of this programme have not been demonstrated. The members of the Commerce Committee from the Opposition wanted to have Treasury the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Health come before the select committee to spell out what the costs and the benefits of this programme might be. In the true spirit of National Party democracy the chair denied the right of select committee members to hear from those officials to challenge the nonsense that Steven Joyce talked about—1800 jobs. But we actually read the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research paper that says the figure was wrong. He did not know where to put the decimal point. Do you know what the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research says? The real number of jobs—net long-term—was 18 Minister Joyce. You were out by a factor of about 100 percent—18 jobs permanently not the 1800. That is a factor of 100 percent.