Sage Eugenie: Appropriation (2014/15 Supplementary Estimates) Bill Imprest Supply (First for 2015/16) Bill — Second ReadingsText is subject to correctionSage Eugenie: Appropriation (2014/15 Supplementary Estimates) Bill Imprest Supply (First for 2015/16) Bill — Second Readings[Sitting date: 17 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4513. Text is subject to correction.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):I am pleased to take a short call on the Appropriation (2014/15 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. I strongly dispute the clichés that Mr Bishop was rolling out there and his assertion that this is a Government that is a progressive equitable force for change. A number of the appropriations that are in this bill deal with the anchor projects and earthquake recovery in Christchurch and there the Government is the very opposite of being a progressive force for equity. Instead a lot of these anchor projects and the cost-sharing agreement that the Crown has made with the Christchurch City Council are about burdening the council with substantial debt. For big projects like the stadium and the convention centre where the Government is putting a large amount of money into facilities like the convention centre and requiring the council to do the same for the stadium that is burdening the council with debt. It is forcing the council in its long-term plan to look at selling the city’s assets. That is not promoting equity because rates will then increase if we do not have assets like Orion Christchurch International Airport and Lyttelton Port of Christchurch to provide dividends to the city in order to reduce the number of assets that Christchurch residents need to pay for.In this bill we see quite a few changes: an increase in allocation for earthquake recovery land ownership and management and nearly $69 million for the development of the central city anchor projects. Here there has been total opaqueness by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and the Government over the increasing costs of some of those anchor projects such as the convention centre. When we put in Official Information Act requests what do we get? Pages of redaction even when we are asking about what additional funding was allocated in previous financial years to assist the procurement process for the anchor projects. We get denied the business cases. Indeed at the select committee the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority has said that there will not be any information provided on the business case for things like the convention centre until all the major contracts have been signed. That is not good budget management. That is not sound management of public money when costs for things like the anchor projects—the convention centre in particular—look from the various comments that have been made in the media as if they are spiralling out of control yet the public cannot see where that $300 million is likely to be going.In the bill we also have $40 million for the ownership and divestment of the anchor projects and again there has been a total lack of information from the Government over who will own facilities like the stadium the convention centre and the Metro Sports Facility. We put in Official Information Act requests and they get answered with very little information about the sorts of public-private funding arrangements that the Government may be entering into. When we have the chair of the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce calling for private sector providers to own libraries in Christchurch how is there any guarantee that the hundreds of millions of dollars of public money that is in these appropriations and is going into things like the convention centre will actually end up with an asset that is publicly owned? Or is it being used to subsidise businesses like Accor Hotels which the Government wants to operate the convention centre and to subsidise private interests rather than having publicly owned facilities? There is another item here: $241 million for the procurement and preparation of land and other assets for the development of the anchor projects. Again there have been large areas of land that have just been acquired from the Christchurch City Council for the convention centre—part of Gloucester Street—but without full recompense being paid to the council.Then further on in the bill there are changes to the appropriations relating to the Avon River Papa o Ōtākaro precinct that cover more than one financial year. A petition has been signed by over 6000 people calling for the Avon/Ōtākaro park to be extended beyond the central city out to the sea yet the Government is totally silent on what the future of the residential red zone will be when all the former houses have been cleared and people have moved on. Instead of focusing that Avon River project just on the central city and spending some $98 million on 2.5 kilometres of the river in the central city the Government should be looking at how we can have a full river park that goes from the city to the sea that provides space for natural hazard management in terms of the flooding issues in the Avon/Ōtākaro River and that provides space for community gardens and for public art. But no again there is absolute silence on what the Government’s plans are for the future of that land despite the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that have been well spent in purchasing the land from the former owners so that they could move on.Again in the bill there is a reduction in expenditure for the cost of the bus interchange. That may be because that project has been brought in on time but there is additional funding being provided for the convention centre. We need to have much more accountability from the Government over how these big anchor projects are to be funded. We need the Government to actually renegotiate the cost-sharing agreement with the Christchurch City Council. There has been a major review of the costs of repair of sewerage stormwater and local roads—that report is not public—but the Government should be contributing more to the repair of horizontal infrastructure rather than capping its contribution to those costs and rather than putting all of this money into a big stadium that people in Christchurch have clearly signalled the city does not want and does not need and that is an extravagance rather than something that is vital to the recovery of the city.Similarly with the convention centre international experts have said that with the Queenstown convention centre the Wellington convention centre and the Auckland convention centre we will have a glut of convention centres in New Zealand. Yet this bill is continuing to provide for large amounts of public money to be put into a convention centre in Christchurch that there has been no opportunity for the public to have any say in the design of because it has all been pushed through under emergency legislation rather than through the Resource Management Act process and there has been no opportunity to scrutinise and see a business case that sets out whether there is actually even a sound financial basis for this investment of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money. So there are details about figures in the bill but not a lot of detail about where this money is going and the Government needs to be much more accountable for the spending of public money.