Turei Metiria: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: General Debate[Sitting date: 23 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14193. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business. As if the Skycity deal was not rotten enough—as if it was not rotten enough—we now have one of the most unethical bills ever to pass through this House’s history sneaked through on the votes of not one but two deeply conflicted Government MPs. When the Opposition is down one member due to the by-election it is an abuse of democracy to pass the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill in such circumstances.MPs are under huge pressure to vote against this deal. The pressure is coming from families churches and organisations that have been harmed by problem gambling or left to mop up its mess. Sam Lotu-Iiga knows all about this pressure. He represents a community guided by deeply held religious beliefs that is genuinely troubled by gambling. How convenient then that a supposed spokesperson for the Catholic Church should front up to a select committee with evidence that the Church thinks that the casino is really a pretty good place—in fact a safer place to gamble. But that was not the Church’s view of the casino at all. The Church does not support this deal. The man who gave that evidence was none other than Sam Lotu-Iiga’s own electorate chairman Seamus Donegan. When Mr Donegan gave the evidence Sam Lotu-Iiga sat listening in silence. He never once revealed his relationship with the man not even in the days afterwards when the Church had to distance itself from Mr Donegan’s comments and set the public record straight. I say that Mr Lotu-Iiga’s silence over all these weeks speaks volumes. My only hope is that he is troubled enough by his conscience to allow it to be heard when the time comes to vote for this unethical morally compromised bill.John Banks is also deeply conflicted over this bill. John Banks has railed like a preacher against the evils of gambling in the past. He has called casino operators “wide boys”. He has accused them of having “sucked hung drawn [and] quartered” the people of New Zealand. But just $15000 later he has changed his tune. Asked by reporters how he could in all honesty support the deal John Banks replied that he did not gamble and he did not drink but he did not inflict his values on others. Well then why did he vote to raise the drinking age to 20? Of course he inflicts his values on others. He just disappears from his values when it suits him.John Banks is a textbook case of conflict. When a member votes on a deal worth $400 million to a casino while at the same time the casino’s chief executive officer is in court giving evidence against him there is a conflict of interest. It is a conflict of interest burden that is borne by Mr Banks. The rules around conflicts of interest exist in this Parliament for a reason. Even the perception of a conflict is enough to require standard management: declaration of the conflict and in some cases removing oneself from the decision making. It happens all the time and is the best way to manage the conflict or perceived conflict. The Skycity bill deserves to go down in a ball of flames as the perfect example of the Key Government’s crony capitalist values.Regardless of the bill the Green Party has produced proposals for making New Zealanders safer from problem gambling anyway. We will make pre-commitment on pokies compulsory rather than voluntary so gamblers will have to set a limit at the outset and will not be able to exceed it in the heat of the moment. This is effective in the same way that compulsory seatbelts are effective whereas voluntary seatbelts are not. We will outlaw inducements by casinos to problem gamblers to encourage them to come back to gamble. We know that that happens because 67 percent of the pokie revenue at Skycity Casino comes from gamblers who are part of the loyalty programme. So it knows who they are it knows where they live it knows that that programme is supposed to be used to prevent harm and yet that is used by Skycity to market to thoseproblem gamblers. We will stop that across the board including for Skycity. Yes these ideas come about through our fight over the Skycity deal but they exist on their own as reasonable practical and responsible ways to stop problem gambling. Thank you.