Cunliffe David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 13 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2935. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Is it not funny how this Government has gone from something resembling  
The 
Love Boat 
 with the New Zealand public to  
A 
Nightmare on Elm Street 
 in the space of just a short few months. The names of what has taken the Government there are already writ into political legend. They are “Banks and the banana boat” and the sieve that is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The photocopier must have been going double time over there from what has arrived in the Opposition offices. McCully is the exorcist. That is what this is. The sleazy deals where the Government has sold the law—things like I do not know Warner Bros the Telecom broadband deal MediaWorks which is the company that Steven Joyce used to own and then bailed out. And now Skycity. The poor old Opposition is drowning in a sea of riches at the moment. We are finding it difficult to know quite which scandal to touch on first. Because at 11 o’clock today the Office of the Auditor-General said that it was investigating Steven Joyce and the deal with Skycity— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: And John Key. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —and John Key for the lack of due process for the lack of transparency in the tender. Then at 1 o’clock Mr Joyce issued a press release which said: “We don’t give a damn. We’re going to carry on regardless. We don’t care what the Officer of Parliament the Auditor-General says. We’re going to carry on regardless.” Exactly what will happen if the Government does rush out a shoddy deal with one party—Skycity—and then the Office of the Auditor-General comes out and says: “Sorry back to square one.”? Could it be that Skycity could then sue the Government—sue the taxpayer—for non-performance? Could it be that the jilted suitors at the wedding could also sue? Morrison and Co. Infratil ASB Bank Auckland Council Ngati Whatua—what of those? The word around the Auckland business community is now “Have the rules changed? How do you get work done in this town? Do you have to invite the Prime Minister to dinner?”.  
You know they may not have loved the form-filling that went with Ministry of Economic Development tender processes they may have sometimes chafed against the paperwork but nobody ever said it was not fair. But in this case let us just look at the time line. It actually goes right back to 2001 when none other than Judith Collins the current Minister for ACC whom people will have noticed is under just an incy-wincy cloud at the moment was the National-appointed chair of the Casino Control Authority. She approved 230 extra pokie machines to get the first Skycity conference centre built and thus set the precedent.  
I understand the Beehive is trying to spin that as a Labour decision when it was taken by the chair of the Casino Control Authority Judith Collins. Well is that not interesting? Fast-forward to August 2009: the Ministry of Economic Development does a feasibility study under Steven Joyce but none other than the Prime Minister the Minister of Tourism intervenes to say “Stop work. Nobody do anything on this until my mates at Skycity have presented their proposal.” At the same time Skycity is saying how well connected it is to the Government and only after Skycity’s deal arrived is any sort of process restarted. Surprise surprise—everybody else’s proposals are bagged and the Government negotiates with only one partner Skycity.  
How very very interesting. Why would any Government negotiate with only one tenderer giving itself no fall-back position and thus losing any guarantee that the taxpayer would get the best value? That will be one of the questions that the Office of the Auditor-General will seek to answer. And why did the Government not treat all parties to that tender equally? Why did it not give ASB the same chance it gave Skycity? Why did it not give Infratil the same chance it gave Skycity? The answer is easy: the board had not invited John Key to dinner. Well I do not know that that is going to be good enough for the Auditor-General’s office. And when and if it is not then the question will be asked: why did Steven Joyce thumb his nose at the Auditor-General—thumb his nose not only at due process but at the Officers of Parliament?