Goff Phil: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionGoff Phil: New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 07 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14503. Text is subject to correction.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you Mr Chairman. A very wise choice.Iain Lees-Galloway: Nobody else does.Hon PHIL GOFF: There is a question that my colleague is referring to—that any profession that demands the title “honourable” is probably anything but but I will not go there.The title of this bill the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill in clause 1 is actually a deceptive title. It is a title that does not reveal anything about what this bill actually represents. So I am suggesting to the Committee that a more honest title would be the “Convention Centre (Dirty Deal Implementation) Bill”. That might sound a little unusual to you but it is actually reflective of what this bill is about. Was this a bill simply to implement the result of a competitive tender to build the convention centre? No it was not. There was no tender. There was no competitive bidding. This is a deal where John Key sat down and was wined and dined by Skycity and gave it a gold-plated deal. This is the wide boy currency trader way of reaching a deal. It has nothing to do with the propriety of public sector tendering.There were other tenderers out there: Vector and Ngāti Whātua. They were reputable tenderers which might have designed a convention centre that could be funded in an above-board way without the dishonesty and the dirty dealing that this bill represents. But that process never happened. John Key had two personal meetings. He told his officials to stop the process involving the other tenderers. That comes close to criminal activity. It is utterly inappropriate.The Auditor-General looked at this and thought: “I’d better consider what has happened here. It doesn’t seem right.” Just before she was due to report John Key came out and said that the report would totally vindicate him. That was another piece of deception. This report from the Auditor-General did not totally vindicate John Key. It did exactly the opposite. The Auditor-General who is the watchdog of how this Government should be behaving said that there were deficiencies on the part of Ministers deficiencies on the part of officials. In fact she said this about it: “we do not consider that the evaluation process was transparent or even handed.” That was the considered language of an Auditor-General. Anybody else would have said that that was straight cronyism. It lacked transparency. It lacked openness. It lacked honesty. It was a dirty deal. I agree with Metiria Turei. It is a shonky sleazy deal—a sleazy deal. That is not reflecting on the people who did the deal—much. It is a sleazy deal.I want to say this. The title I suggested is an alternative title—the “Convention Centre (Dirty Deal Implementation) Bill”—but there is another title that would be more honest than what this Government is hiding behind. It is the “Increasing Harm from Gambling Bill” because how was the Government going to fund this convention centre? Was it going to fund it by saying: “Anybody who sets up a business should be funded by the market and if there is not a market for it do not come to the public for a subsidy.”? The Government could have done that or it could have done it a different way. It could have said: “Well the tourism industry benefits from this. Maybe the tourism industry could fund this deal?”.What has the Government actually done? It is funding this by increasing the concessions to Skycity to put another 230 gambling machines in place when the Gambling Act 2003 requires a sinking lid on the number gambling machines. Why does the Gambling Act do that? Why did the Labour Government pass that Gambling Act?Because the regulatory impact statement from the officials for this bill said that this kind of gambling is most associated with harm in terms of problem gambling. Every member in this Chamber has seen the people who sit on the stools in front of those pokie machines—machines designed to drag as much money as possible out of the person who is playing them machines that are designed to make a profit for the house at the expense and the misery of the people who operate them—and this Government says that this convention centre should be built on the misery of the people who are playing these gambling machines.What we find from the regulatory impact statement is that the Department of Internal Affairs says that another 8000 people will be affected because of the problem gambling associated with these extra 230 machines. There will be 8000 people and as my colleague has rightly suggested according to the Department of Internal Affairs 6500 of them will be children. I say to those National members who have got their heads dropped in shame who will not take the call and who will not justify what their Government is doing that those same members will come back into this Chamber and condemn the people who suffer from gambling addiction when they are feeding this addiction because they are increasing the gambling machines in Skycity by 230—another 8000 family members. There will be more kids who will be deprived because their mothers or their fathers suffer from gambling addiction promoted by the machines that are promoted by this Government in order to get the convention centre.I will try one third and last title that this bill should be called and that is the “Dodgy Deal (Lacking Cost Benefit Analysis) Bill” because that is exactly what it is. You know the Commerce Committee is set up to examine the bills that come before this House and its members have the right to call in officials from the Ministry of Health from the Department of Internal Affairs and from Treasury to find out what this bill really does. The chairman of that committee denied the select committee the right to have those officials before it and no wonder because when we read what those departments say we find that this is not a good deal for New Zealand. This is what Treasury says. It “has strong concerns that the private benefits to SkyCity will exceed public benefits to New Zealanders.”Of course this bill is a gold-plated deal for Skycity to make money until 2048. Most of us will be dead by that time but the bill will have locked in privileges that will enable Skycity to take more and more money every year out of the gambling population and it will not be touched by the law that is set up to control gambling. That is a disgrace. It is unprecedented. This National Government will go to no ends to protect and enhance the position of its cronies. The legislation is a disgrace. It should not proceed. It is damaging to New Zealand it looks after the cronies and the process that this National Government has followed in pursuing it is frankly a disgrace.