Locke Keith: Major Events Management Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLocke Keith: Major Events Management Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 August 2007. Volume:641;Page:11383. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEITH LOCKE (Green): I do not think that anyone in this Chamber wants the Rugby World Cup and major events like that not to be very successful. But the Green Party viewpoint is that this over-the-top heavy-handed legislation will not help us to have successful international events like the Rugby World Cup. In fact it will put off New Zealanders if this Parliament seems to be just dancing to the tune of the big multinationals that are sponsoring events like this. In France that is Heineken Coca-Cola McDonald’s and I think Adidas. Are we serving them or are we serving the New Zealand people? It is true and I take what Allan Peachey says that we want to be true to those who go along play sport and coach sport—the ordinary people—but I do not think that this legislation will help. This is not the Kiwi way.In relation to what the member said about ticket scalping I agree that the requirement is for a proper distribution of tickets. I think that it is the case pretty much that tickets will go out through rugby clubs through the Internet and through various ways. That spreads the tickets out. If people get sick want to onsell tickets or get one or two extra tickets then why should we abandon the normal procedure of having a second-hand market and come down with the heavy hand of the State? The San Francisco Giants a baseball team in the United States accepts that there will be a second-hand market and that there will be onselling so it provides a whole Internet site for that to happen under its own auspices. It is just so strange that we have parties in this Parliament trying to clamp down on a second-hand market.I have two lots of amendments to Part 2 on my Supplementary Order Paper 138. Most of them are related to the clean transport route and the theme of one of the amendments is to knock out the provision for a clean transport route up to 5 kilometres from a stadium. I think that that is one of the most silly over-the-top bits of the legislation—that somehow some New Zealand firms cannot advertise 5 kilometres out. That area would cover virtually the whole of Wellington down the routes that would be defined. The distance is a long way out from say the Westpac Stadium or whatever and a long way out from Eden Park in the case of Auckland. So I would ask members to support my amendments in order to knock out the reference to clean transport routes in the bill.The other amendment is to knock out the provision about the new offence of pitch invasion. As I explained previously there is no need for that. Any people wandering on to pitches for whatever reason they may have are covered already by offences listed in the Summary Offences Act or the Crimes Act—that is by provisions about disorderly behaviour. Do we really need to get so hot and bothered as to bring in a new offence for that?But I take the point and in some ways Shane Jones is quite correct that rugby needs all the support it can get at the present time. I went along to a league game a couple of weekends ago and the Warriors actually had more people along at that game then therewere people at the Auckland-Waikato game. So I think that rugby is in a bit of trouble but I do not think that this bill will help. Piri Weepu may well go to league if those spectator figures continue.It is just stupid and impractical to try to control ticket scalping in the way that this bill proposes. If people have spare tickets then they will rustle around and find someone to buy them if it is a big international event and they will generally sell them for more than the cover price.At the Commerce Committee representatives of TradeMe came along and said: “Look this is going to be a bit hard for us to work out how to stop this. We will do our best of course as we do to implement any law that Parliament passes.” But that company and others have pointed out that people can go on to eBay or somewhere else and still make ticket transactions. We cannot suppress a free market in second-hand goods just by passing a law and no argument has been raised in this Parliament as to why we should do that.