Shearer David: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is subject to correctionShearer David: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 06 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14444. Text is subject to correction.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I have spoken on this bill the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill before and I have to say that each time I do this I realise more and more that this is an abhorrent piece of legislation. It is wrong in so many ways. It is wrong morally. It is wrong in the way that the process was followed. But I just want to say as perhaps many people in this House have not gone there that when you go to that casino and you walk through that main gambling area where all the pokie machines are stacked up you see that the people who are putting their money into those machines are not the high rollers whom we are trying to attract from overseas.These are the people from my electorate and from South Auckland and from west Auckland who cannot afford to give away their savings their salaries and their benefits into those machines. To think that this bill—this Act—will bring about another 230 of those machines it obviously can only mean that more of those people are going to be trapped. As my colleague Trevor Mallard just said those machines are no longer just the simple machines where you put money into them; they are machines that operate on cards. They are machines where many of them at more than $20 at a time can fleece you and take that from you which is basically preying on those people who are unable to ensure that they able to step back from that and say: “No I can’t do this any more.” That is the real worry about this convention centre: it is being built on the backs of those people. There is the harm that it is doing to those families and to those people who are unable to resist putting their savings through those machines—230 extra machines. Those machines are programmed to take more money off people faster.When this agreement was being talked about many months ago I spoke to somebody who was a former senior employee of Skycity. I said to them: “What’s the deal going to look like?” and he said: “Well if it was me what I’d be looking for is an extension of my gambling licence by about 10 years I’d be looking for a lot more pokie machines and I’d be looking for the pokie machines that are able to take money off people much faster than the ones that we’ve got currently.” Well Skycity certainly got a really good deal out of this because it ticks all the boxes. But even he—even he—was shocked by the fact that it was a 35-year licence rather than the 7 or 8 years that he anticipated and even he was shocked by KordaMentha’s conclusions about how much money was coming back to Skycity. I believe that that amount has been grossly underestimated and other analyses that I have seen seem to demonstrate that it is actually well under what Skycity is likely to make from this deal.That is one part of it—the ability to take more money off people faster more money off the people who can least afford it more money to line the pockets of Skycity for 35 years. But the other part of it of course is how this deal actually came into being. Although this is all part of Part 1 I want to touch on the fact that the deal was done without the other companies that were tendering for this contract having the same information that Skycity had. So instead of the Skycity deal being a Skycity deal and it being a Vector deal or a Ngāti Whātua deal or an Infratil deal with their having an ability to actually put up a proposal that might have satisfied the Government they never even got that opportunity. They did not even know that the rules had changed. SoSkycity was set up right from the very beginning. That is why the Auditor-General said that the process lacked transparency it was not even-handed it was flawed and there were deficiencies on both the part of officials and on the part of Ministers and to say that somehow this arrangement this deal has totally vindicated the Ministers of course is absolute nonsense.The other part of this is what exactly we are getting out of it: the convention centre. At the moment most of us would support having a convention centre but Treasury documents and Treasury analysis would indicate that actually the peak for a convention centre of this type may have actually passed and the economic returns that we are expected to get are actually going to be somewhat lower than what we expect.But I want to come back to the issue of the harmful effects because most of the problem-gambling organisations that I have spoken to talk about problem gamblers being in the order of about 40 percent of those people who are pulling the levers or pushing the buttons of those pokie machines—40 percent. It means that there will be a huge increase in the number of people who are actually going to be going to the Skycity Casino and being involved in that addictive behaviour. As we have tried in the past to decrease the number of pokie machines and we have heard all about the issues and the problems at the bowling clubs and the rugby clubs around Auckland that are slowly but surely decreasing—some would say that we need to do that more quickly but they are certainly decreasing in number—here we are increasing to dramatic effect the number and going in the other direction. Let us remember that those machines at the rugby clubs the bowling clubs etc. give about a third of their income back to the community whereas Skycity gets to pocket that income and it pays about 2 3 or 4 percent of its returns back to any sort of community fund.This is not just bad for the people who are addicted to gambling and are sitting there putting their money and their life-savings into it supporting and backing and financing a convention centre that I have to say is based on some pretty dubious economics but it is also not giving anything back to the community whatsoever. On top of that the number of jobs that were supposed to be created by this which Grant Robertson talked about in his earlier intervention is grossly—grossly—exaggerated by this Government in terms of what it is going to be producing. Any analysis of what has happened in Australia with regard to the numbers of jobs created by these casinos will tell you that they are nothing like what the Government is proposing. In fact the figure will possibly be well below 100 and many of those jobs are actually going to be for cleaners or bar workers in the lower-paid proportions of our community.Do not get this wrong. This is not about economic development in the grand scheme of things that Steven Joyce has always talked about; this is about furthering the profits of a city through the back-door deals of Ministers and more specifically the Prime Minister. This is a shonky deal. It is a dishonest deal. It takes money from the pockets of ordinary New Zealanders. It creates harm in our society and that is why when most New Zealanders look at this deal they know that this is wrong. They feel that they have been duped and wronged by this Government in ensuring that this sham gets put into our city. It is in the middle of our city. It takes up several blocks—several blocks—of land where people are going to be going in in their tens of thousands and putting their money into machines money that they can ill-afford to spend. So this is why I feel particularly aggrieved by this happening in my city. When I go through that hall and I see the sorts of people who are putting money into those machines and I see the sorts of people who are going to be putting money into those machines in a multiple increase on what we have today then that is why I am standing here with my colleagues and absolutely opposing this deal.