Shearer David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shearer David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1791. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 We are not objecting to every proposal; we are just objecting to the shonky ones—the shonky ones. That is what we are objecting to. And this hokey-pokey deal Mr Carter is one of those shonky deals that we are opposing. Let us just take a look at this particular deal because I am really pleased that you have brought it up. We are looking at increasing the number of pokies in Skycity by 500 pulling $42 million a year out of the pockets of ordinary New Zealanders—New Zealanders who cannot afford to give up that sort of money. That is what we are doing here—$42 million. That is how we are going to subsidise this big convention centre.  
But there are two things that really upset me about this—two things. One is how we are going to do that. Well we are going to change our law. We are just going to change our law to enable Skycity to bump up the number of pokie machines increase the number of gaming tables and increase the length of its gambling licence. Let us look at the maths of this—$42 million a year. Look at how much the convention centre will cost—$300 million - ish. After 7 years Skycity will have paid it all off. And then it will have another 13 or 14 years of $42 million - plus a year that it can pull out of the economy. That is good business—that is really good business! Skycity is not looking at this as a way of being able to have a convention centre; it is a way of being able to increase its gambling take. Ultimately it is a gambling organisation. And what is this Government going to do? This Government is going to give Skycity the opportunity by changing the law of New Zealand to enable it to pull massive amounts of profits out of ordinary New Zealanders’ pockets and of those people who are using those pokies 40-plus percent of them have got a gambling problem—40-plus percent of them.  
I happen to be very opposed to pokies as is Mr Banks by the way. Mr Banks spoke openly and outwardly against pokie machines. Mrs Collins over here spoke out against the monopoly that Skycity might have and what are we doing? Well actually we were handing a monopoly over to Skycity because the sinking-lid policy that the Minister of Justice talks about does not actually apply to Skycity; it applies to all of the pokie machines that are out there in the suburbs. This Minister has the audacity to stand up and talk about a sinking-lid policy out there in the suburbs. How did that sinking-lid policy come about? Well actually we changed the Gambling Act. Oh that is great. Who voted for that? Actually the Labour Government voted for that. What did National do? It voted against it. But now it is convenient to say that this sinking-lid policy is a great thing because ultimately we will end up with fewer pokies. But what it will mean is that we end up with more pokie machines in Skycity and fewer out there in the suburbs where they are actually contributing to community events and community facilities. So what an extraordinarily audacious and amazing plan that this Government has come up with: increasing the number of pokies in Skycity!  
But there is more to this deal. The way this plan was put together is that of the five companies that tendered for this Skycity got a wink and a nod and a dinner with the Prime Minister and it got across the line. The others did not. I was speaking with Vector the other day and they said: “Gee we wouldn’t have actually minded a bit of a conversation with the Prime Minister. We might have been able to have come up with a deal that would not involve putting pokie machines up as payment for a convention centre.”  
This Minister talks about a great deal. This is not a great deal; this is social harm in Auckland. This is about $42 million a year being pulled out by Skycity and this is about a shonky deal that did not give the same opportunities to every other company that had the opportunity to put up a tender. What if they had had the opportunity to sit down with the Prime Minister and say: “I think we can do a deal here.”? What about Infratil? If Infratil had the ability to sit down with the Minister it may have had a different deal but that did not actually eventuate.