Turei Metiria: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14556. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I am very proud of the Green Party and my colleagues who have led the opposition to this New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Where were you in 2001?METIRIA TUREI: If Dr Smith is referring to the gambling legislation that was eventually passed in 2003 the Green Party voted against that legislation. You should check your facts. I would note that the whole debate from National on the sale of this deal to New Zealanders has been littered with falsehoods and lies—littered with falsehoods and lies. We can start from the very beginning from the very start of theprocess when John Key Steven Joyce and their officials went out seeking tenders for building the convention centre in Auckland.Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The member made an assertion about the Ministers responsible for this bill including my colleague Steven Joyce and specifically used the word “lies”. That is not a parliamentary phrase.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I understand the point of order and I was listening very carefully. What the member said was that the process was littered with untruths and lies. It was not attributed to an individual. I know it is a fine line but this House has been quite clear that all members are honourable members. I would caution the member that she will bring disorder if she skirts around the areas that the member is doing. I am not ruling against her on this occasion but I caution her to be very careful with her words.METIRIA TUREI: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.It started from the very beginning when the tenders went out and five tenders I understand were returned to the officials. Of the five tenders the Skycity tender was the fifth. It was the one that failed most of the criteria that the officials had put out. Yet it was Skycity and its tender that went to John Key and John Key wrote: “Check with Skycity first.” He got his officials to go off to talk to Skycity to have meetings with Skycity’s people to talk to them about their tender to talk to them about what they could do to improve it. The Government then changed the criteria to make it even easier for Skycity to meet the threshold test because from the very beginning John Key and Steven Joyce wanted to deliver to Skycity the new casino that Skycity wanted. For 10 years Skycity has been fighting to get a new casino and it finally found the mechanism to do it—by offering to build John Key his monument the convention centre in exchange for the concessions that would deliver to Skycity the third-largest casino in the country.So right from the very beginning there were mistruths and secret deals being done by this Government through its process. The only reason that that became public after nearly 1 year I think of the negotiations was because the Green Party put in a complaint to the Auditor-General and asked her to investigate. It took them 6 months to work through the papers even to decide whether or not to investigate and after 6 months of investigation—initial investigation—the Auditor-General did look at this deal and did come back with a finding that it was neither even-handed nor transparent. It was neither even-handed nor transparent. John Key broke the confidentiality arrangements with the Auditor-General and went out around Christmas time of that year saying: “She’s not going to find me guilty of anything. She’s going to say that it’s all fine. I’m vindicated.” What happened was that 2 months later the report came out saying it was neither even-handed nor transparent. There were problems with the process because the process was dirty from the start. It was National and the officials and the Ministers who were wanting to keep all of that secret but we got that exposed through the Auditor-General process and rightly so.What are some of the untruths and misleadings that have come out as a result of John Key having now got the deal signed with Skycity spent all this money getting it ready so that its tender would be accepted and accepted its tender to build this convention centre in exchange for the third-largest casino? He then has to sell it to the country. So what does he do to sell it to the country? All sorts of dodgy stuff is going on to sell it to the country. Let us start with the jobs shall we? We end up with a report which the Government relies on—it says so in its regulatory impact statement—that there will be 800 jobs after the casino is built and 1000 jobs in its construction. There is not a single piece of evidence. There is no document that the Government has or at least that it has released that shows those numbers—not a single one. Why? Because actually thatinformation comes from Skycity. The Government is relying on Skycity’s numbers to justify this deal and to try to sell this to the country.What does the evidence say? What do the independent financial reports say? There might be around 350 jobs in construction. There might be around 300 jobs maybe in the operation of it—certainly not the 800 and the 1000 that Steven Joyce and John Key and now Bill English talk about. But do you know what the independent financial analysis of this deal shows? It shows that there will be a net increase to the country in jobs of just 18—just 18. And the Government has refused—it refers to this report actually—to acknowledge the numbers of the only independent financial assessment of the results of this deal because it wants to sell this deal to the country so badly that it is prepared to inflate the numbers from just a few hundred to thousands and thousands across the country. It is simply not true.Who in the Government disagrees? The Government is saying of course that this is all fine and perfectly rational and that it has lots of evidence to show that this is a good deal and that the harm minimisation measures that it is putting in place will be effective in reducing the harm that will be caused by the increased gambling. Actually that is not the truth either. That is just another set of spin. The Government is not telling the truth when it says that these harm minimisation measures will work. Who do we turn to for that evidence? We turn to the Ministry of Health; we turn to the Department of Internal Affairs—those agencies that are responsible for assessing whether or not these measures will work. What does the Ministry of Health say? It says that the measures are effectively useless. It says that the voluntary pre-commitment is effectively useless. It says that the harm minimisation measures that the Government is trying to sell to the country will not reduce harm.What else does it say? It says that 8000 New Zealanders will be affected—badly affected—by this deal. And on top of those 8000 New Zealanders another 6500 children will be badly affected by this deal. That is the evidence that the Government has but it will not talk about this to the public. It will not ask for the cost of that social harm so it can say that it does not know what it will cost. It will not ask for more detailed evidence about the impact of gambling harm on families so it can pretend that if it does not have the information it does not count and it does not matter. It is another major spin another mistruth perpetrated by this Government in order to sell this deal to the country.Then I think the last and the worst of the mistruths that this Government spins is that it comes at no cost. The Government says to New Zealand: “This deal doesn’t cost you anything taxpayers. You’re all fine. You don’t pay a cent and you get this wonderful convention centre.” That is a lie. It is a lie. It is a lie because the cost is borne by taxpayers. I tell you who bears that cost. Those who will bear the cost are not just the 8000 individuals who will be badly affected or the 6500 children but the hundreds of New Zealand businesses that we know will suffer from serious fraud and theft as a result of gambling addiction caused by the increase in gambling opportunities from this bill. It will be the community organisations the playcentres the marae and the community groups that work so hard to support New Zealanders across this country. They will be the ones who pay when we know that more than 50 percent of the crime that these groups these charities suffer is to feed gambling addiction and gambling harm. We know that the fraud that businesses will suffer will be what pays for this deal. So when the Government says that it is at no cost to New Zealanders it is telling New Zealanders a lie.The Green Party has been very clear from the start that we are opposed to this deal. It is morally contemptible. It is a dirty dodgy deal. It should never have occurred in this way. We welcome Labour’s commitment to opposing this. We make this commitmentto New Zealanders. We will continue this fight. This convention centre has not been built yet. The agreement that Skycity has with the Government has not yet been fulfilled. It still needs to do a great deal more before a single sod is turned or a single new pokie machine is put into that building. We will fight this deal all the way and we welcome every New Zealander who will join us. Thank you.