Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debate 
[Volume:635;Page:6510] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 It is a great shame that Mr Hodgson the member who preceded me is not back in his office doing something for those thousands of cancer patients who are unlikely to get their treatment because of his incompetence so far rather than being here in the House and making a ridiculous speech like that. He did make one interesting point. He said that the Opposition should be trying to triangulate the Government. That is a political manoeuvre where one tries to get the Government in trouble. Let me tell members we do not need to do that while there are senior Ministers in this Government wandering around the halls of this Parliament referring to Helen Clark as “Queen Helen” and bemoaning her imperious decision to place the national stadium on the Auckland waterfront. 
I do not want to speak this afternoon about the merits of one stadium over another. But I do want to make this clear: the National Party supported the efforts of the Rugby Union which were also supported by the Government to get the 2011 Rugby World Cup to New Zealand. We did so because the benefits of hosting such an event are enormous for this country. Everybody who has any idea about tourism numbers will know that they have held up in this country over the last few years largely attributable to things like  
The Lord of the Rings 
 movies and various other smaller-scale events that have meant that the rest of the world have been able to look at New Zealand and say that that is a place they would like to go to. We think those initiatives are worthwhile. 
But we also know that during the time of the Rugby World Cup in excess of 2 billion people worldwide will be watching at least one rugby game in New Zealand. That will be a huge opportunity to showcase the nation and to build on an industry that now is over 40 percent of our domestic economy. We are very upset about the fact that Labour Government members have sat on their hands for 12 months and done nothing to back up the promise they made to have a 60000-seat stadium available for the final of the Rugby World Cup. We now know that a big part of that “sitting on their hands” has been caused by the Prime Minister who said “not in my backyard.” That sort of behaviour is just unacceptable. 
Now we are in the awkward position of seeing local authorities in Auckland struggling with the decision that they must make within 14 days to commit their ratepayers to what appears to be quite an extraordinary expense. There were interesting comments from the Minister of Finance who said that if they go for one stadium Eden Park there will be no Government money. But if they go for the waterfront stadium the cheque book will be wide open. We know that there have been discussions between the Labour Government and Fletcher’s but I do not want to suggest that this is somehow a mechanism for the Labour Government or the Labour caucus to get rid of a certain encumbrance that hangs around their necks at the present time. But I would say that $800000 in a multi-hundred-million-dollar project is very little. So it does surprise us that we are in this situation. 
But more than surprising us it angers us. This event is too big and too great an opportunity for the country to be put at the sort of risk that Trevor Mallard is creating at the present time. If this Government were serious about New Zealand getting its maximum opportunities out of the Rugby World Cup then it would not be some little cabal on the ninth floor making all the decisions. It would be an opportunity I would have thought for the Government to involve far more people than that and to avoid the sorts of unfortunate political stand-offs that appear to be happening at the moment. 
 United Future is taking a wait and see position and the New Zealand First party is saying that it wants to take a wait and see option as well. Nobody can sit comfortably in this Parliament without the numbers in front of us without knowing what it will cost and without knowing who will bear that cost. We spend lots of time in this Parliament talking about the rates burden on people throughout the country and our desire to reduce it. The Government even brought in a rates rebate scheme. Let us make it clear that unless Michael Cullen is prepared to make a bigger commitment than he has so far anybody who receives that rebate will end up losing it.