Brownlee Gerry: Major Events Management Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrownlee Gerry: Major Events Management Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 August 2007. Volume:641;Page:11373. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I am very happy to make a contribution on the purpose part of the Major Events Management Bill. The speaker before me Maryan Street outlined what the purpose is and I do not want to reiterate those words but in essence the purpose is also to advance New Zealand’s wider interests by hosting events in areas where we are particularly prominent. The Rugby World Cup of course is one of those events the Cricket World Cup will follow and I am sure there will be other big international events that will be able to avail themselves of the provisions of this particular law and these particular arrangements for their events to be equally successful.Anyone who looks at the effect that the Rugby World Cup can have on our economy not only in the year or the month that the event is held but in the years leading up to it and the years subsequent to it would agree that it is appropriate that we make arrangements to ensure the event’s success. It is interesting to note that much of New Zealand’s economy in the last couple of years has been somewhat insulated from the decline in the rest of the world’s tourism markets and that this is apparently attributable to the success of theLord of the Ringsfilms. I do not doubt that that is a fact and I congratulate all those people who were involved in those films. But it needs to be recognised that the number of people who will watch any one or all three of the Lord of the Rings trilogy pales into insignificance compared with the number of people who will watch one or more games during the Rugby World Cup.I recall last year going to an office not too far from here where a large number of people had gathered to watch the Tour de France the bike race that happens in France each year.Hon Trevor Mallard: I’m surprised you got up that early Gerry.GERRY BROWNLEE: Actually it was a replay. The Minister has said that he is surprised I got up as early as that. In fact I was up as early as that; I work very long hours. In the small part of the day that I normally reserve for sleep I was watching a replay with a group of people who interestingly were not making comments about the race itself but were constantly commenting about the beautiful background and the scenery through which the race was happening. A similar thing will happen with the Rugby World Cup. More eyes will look at this country more eyes will see what we are about and more people will make a decision to come here and effectively bring their import dollars into this country. Given that we have such a big reliance—around 40 percent of our domestic economy—on tourism it is an appropriate focus.I want to pick up on a couple of remarks made by Keith Locke. The first thing is that things like the Rugby Sevens will not be affected by this bill at all. The Rugby Sevens event is not a major event and is unlikely to be declared so. It is a very major event for this part of the world but it is not a nationwide event and therefore would not be caught by this legislation. Secondly I want to send a bit of a message in that regard to the organisers of the Rugby World Cup. It is pretty depressing for me standing here today supporting this bill and wanting it to be successful to have read in my local newspaper that my city of Christchurch is unlikely to get to host a semi-final of the Rugby World Cup. I think that this is serious because the promotion around this thing has been that 4 million fans—in other words the whole country—are getting in behind this. It is unacceptable to simply say: “Well you know for the sake of 20000 seats we are going to move the semi-finals and the final to Auckland.”Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s logistics.GERRY BROWNLEE: Do not give me the logistics argument. This is a small country. Auckland is an hour away from Christchurch by plane and I am sure it not toohard to organise that. Given that Christchurch is the largest centre in the South Island the reality is that the stadium could easily have been filled by locals anyway. So some of the thinking there needs to change if people expect this event to still be considered New Zealand’s Rugby World Cup rather than Auckland’s Rugby World Cup. So there is a small message there.Around the issue of pitch invasion Mr Locke appeared to make the case that this should be perfectly acceptable. I recall Mr Locke walking down Queen Street in his underwear and I would hate to see him repeat that sort of activity at any one of the Rugby World Cup games because that would be the wrong image for New Zealand. Similarly having the pitch invaded by anyone creates a poor impression of this country. We had a very interesting submission at the Commerce Committee from a young woman called Lisa Lewis. She was a very intelligent young woman and she advanced the view that we should enable some form of pitch invasion. She went on to say that Wikipedia attributes the invention of the art of bikini streaking to her; therefore it is a New Zealand first—no pun on the party of course I say to Mr Mark but a bit of that may help with the votes. She was saying that this sort of thing should be allowed.But as the conversation progressed it became evident that what she was really saying was that at the start of a match the conclusion of a match and half-time there needed to be some form of entertainment and that maybe this form of entertainment could be considered. Under this provision if the event organisers chose to have those sorts of promotions that would be their prerogative provided that whatever they were doing was within the law and was I suppose tastefully presented if I could put it that way. The reality is that all these games these days have pre-match entertainment they have entertainment at half-time and I suspect that they will have something at the conclusion of these games as well. Pitch invasion though is the opportunity for people to impinge on the activity that other people have paid a lot of money to see. No one has a right to do that. We should just simply codify that so the whole world knows where we stand on that particular issue.When it comes to clean transport zones I think there is a whole lot of misunderstanding about what is actually meant. Essentially they are about trying to protect the interests of sponsors who put up a lot of money to make these events fly in the first place. I do not think it is appropriate that people should be able to engage in ambush marketing activities that effectively see them get the credit for the sponsorship. At the select committee we were given a very good example of how this works. The example involved Germany where the football world cup was played. The major sponsor for that event was an airline. It put up a very very significant amount of money to make it work. It tied up its own promotion around the event. But a competing airline carried out the simple exercise of putting on its aeroplanes a decoration that conveyed the clear message that it was the sponsor of that event.At the conclusion of the event a large number of people who had participated as spectators or otherwise were of the view that the competing airline had been the main sponsor. So the poor old airline that had put all the money in and made the event happen was robbed of some of the benefit. I think we have to be realistic about this. It really did fascinate us to see the breadth of creativity that people can engage in in order to ambush the marketing around one of these events.So in response to Mr Locke I say we need to be very relaxed about the provisions in this bill. They are not about destroying business in this country. This entire bill is about giving business in this country an enormous opportunity to grow its activities and to do so for the benefit of the whole country. I am sure that at some stage the Minister will want to share with the Committee the value that New Zealand got out of the recent yachting event at Seville. Was it Seville?Jill Pettis: Valencia.GERRY BROWNLEE: Well I knew it was the name of an orange so I was halfway there. The America’s Cup was very successful for New Zealand businesses. They were able to spin off the back of that. We should not be frightened about the Government actually backing New Zealand. In many ways anyone who argues against this bill argues against that premise.This is a good bill. I think the Committee will make very few changes to it because of the way in which it was dealt with by the Commerce Committee. The committee dealt with the bill on a very very positive basis in order to try to get a bill that was fair to all those who were likely to be affected and to ensure that when it was put in place there would not be too much of a need to go back second-guessing.I conclude by saying that at some point New Zealand might want to consider whether some of our very good local events like the Rugby Sevens should come under these provisions or provisions like them. Perhaps there could be a lesser test. Perhaps it is something that might be devolved to local authorities. Good evidence was put in front of us that there is some need for this particularly around the issue of scalping.