Shearer David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shearer David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 20 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8022. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Yesterday we had the announcement of the Deputy Auditor-General’s report on the Skycity deal and the Prime Minister said that he was totally vindicated by this report. Everybody who has read this report any reasonable New Zealander will see that he was not vindicated; he was implicated. He was implicated right up to his eyeballs. This was a shonky deal and Mr Key is donkey deep in a shonky deal. He was seen to be pulling the strings right up to the last minute. It is a litany of his involvement in ensuring that Skycity got the best deal. It was ensuring that his mates got in front of the process. 
Let us just look at how this litany started. In 2009 John Key advised himself—as you do of course—to chase Skycity for a deal to build a national convention centre. Then he was not sure about ensuring that his own people and his own staff would make sure that that deal was nailed down and sealed because he met with the Skycity bosses in May 2009. But he cannot remember exactly what was discussed—but that is what happens. We do have brain fade in this Chamber and that was what happened. 
On 24 August he wrote on a briefing note that he wanted the Skycity deal closed off. In September his chief of staff his deputy chief of staff and the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet met with Skycity to go over the plans. In September a senior tourism official told them that Skycity wanted its gambling licence extended for building the centre—it gets worse and worse. Then in November John Key and Wayne Eagleson had a cosy little dinner with Skycity bosses so they could look at the plans and “think outside the box”. On 3 December 2009 the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet warned John Key about the dodgy process in a private briefing note but he does not care—he does not care. He does not need to care because his chief of staff was still going on and on meeting with Skycity and seeing what it wanted for this little deal. 
On 23 December 2009 the chair of Skycity wrote to John Key telling him of the regulatory reforms he wanted. What were they? What were those regulatory reforms? Well more pokies. They were more pokies and an extension to Skycity’s gambling licence. In other words the problem gamblers of New Zealand are stumping up the money for this convention centre in a dodgy deal that no other bidder gets to have a look at. In fact no bidder other than Skycity gets to know that actually the Government is not going to put up any of the money. No other bidder actually knew that; only Skycity knew that. Only Skycity gets to be offered regulatory reforms in the form of some sweet deal that John Key offers to it. 
This is a shonky deal. It is a deal that should not be allowed in a country like New Zealand. John Key is involved up to his eyeballs in a shonky deal. It is a deal that John Armstrong calls something that you would expect from a “banana republic without the bananas”. That is a disgrace to this House.