New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill

It is appropriate that the Minister of Police is in the chair for this because what we are discussing is the greatest money-laundering operation in the history of New Zealand, the Skycity Casino.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: That’s right. You accept the tickets. You would go to the rugby, but you won’t support them.

No, no, I have an interruption. I just want to acknowledge that it is Tau Henare’s 20th anniversary in Parliament today. I remember when he was first a member of Parliament. He was tall, he was slim, he was handsome, and he was modest. He is still tall. He is still tall. I do congratulate the member and the other members whose 20th anniversary it is. And, of course, Mr Chairman, you are tall and you were modest. You are still modest. I do not think it is fair to say that you were ever slim. Fit, maybe—fit, maybe. But shall we get back to the bill?

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Please do.

I think it is fair to say that I was responding to a non-verbal interjection on your part. Going back to the bill, the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill, I want to focus on a couple of parts of the bill. The first is in clause 4(2), where it says: “It is the intention of Parliament that the provisions of this Act are interpreted in a manner that best furthers the agreements expressed in the Agreement.” What that says is that it does not really matter what we are passing; the agreement is going to count. That is the attitude of this Government to the law of this country, and especially with regard to this bill, that just stinks. It does not matter what is in the bill; it is the agreement that counts. So it does not matter what dirty deal the Government does; the Parliament cannot override it, because it is the agreement that counts, and that overrides the law of the land. I just want to say that I would be surprised if that worked in a superior court in New Zealand. In my view, I think that, in the end, a court will go to the legislation rather than override the legislation with an interpretative clause like this, but it just shows the attitude of Steven Joyce that he would attempt to do such a thing.

I want to just remind people what that agreement referred to in that clause, clause 4(2), is. It is the agreement to increase the number of gambling machines in New Zealand massively at Skycity. That is the agreement that will cause New Zealanders to lose their homes. That is what Skycity does now. It entices people into gambling, and many of them lose their homes. Many of them lose their families.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: But that’s OK for you to take tickets to the rugby.

Tau Henare might not care about that, but a number of people also lose their lives. That member knows that many people commit suicide every year as a result of the losses that they incur at Skycity. That member knows that the gangs and the moneylenders murder people who owe them money, who borrow it at Skycity—

💬 Hon Tau Henare: Ha, ha!

The member laughs. The member laughs. He only has to go to look at the evidence in the case of the body in the suitcase that was fished out of Auckland harbour. That young man was targeted in Skycity by moneylenders. He borrowed money from them, he got more from them than he could repay, he did not repay, and they killed him, put his body in a suitcase, and dumped it in Auckland harbour. It is the extension of that sort of behaviour that members opposite are voting for. They might not care. They say: “Oh, it is just another Chinese student.” Members on this side care notwithstanding who it is. It does not matter who it is. No one should end up owing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to corrupt moneylenders and people who end up murdering as part of their enforcement activities.

And what are we doing here under clause 4(2)? We are giving legal effect to an agreement that will result in people losing their houses. It is well documented. Members opposite know it. Members opposite know that families are destroyed as a result of problem gambling—the very type of which is caused by this sort of 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week operation that the members opposite want to make worse. Members opposite do not care about the destruction of families that occurs as a result of the inability of Skycity and others to curb problem gambling. And it is the very agreement in clause 4(2) that we are giving force to that members opposite know is going to be the cause of these further problems.

I see that clause 5 binds the Crown. Well, I want to say that it might bind the Crown for now. It might bind the Crown for now, but I do want to remind the Committee of the fact that the Crown cannot bind itself into the future. When there are decent gambling laws in New Zealand—and they are inevitable—the Crown will be unbound from this legislation, because that is the way that our parliamentary system works. You cannot bind a future Government. I think everyone on this side of the Chamber is committed to a decent review of gambling laws, and anyone who suggests that this law, which takes out not one but two reviews of the casino licence, could survive a decent review is fooling themselves. Anyone who thinks that is absolutely deluding themselves. Therefore, people opposite have just got to know that these sorts of arrangements that are embodied in this bill cannot possibly continue.

The Labour Party has looked at the possibility of doing multiple amendments and trying to fix this bill up. And I want to say that we will support the Green amendments. We will vote for them. But we have come to the conclusion that this bill is so bad that it cannot be improved to the point of being acceptable. It is like the old saying that you cannot polish a turd.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! That is unacceptable and the member will not use that term again.

This bill is rubbish, and it does not matter what adjustments you make to it, it cannot be improved to the point of being acceptable. There is nothing that one can do that allows for the extension of gaming, the extension of the highest turnover of any sort of gaming—the highest per table turnover in the country—and, what is more, the highest pokie machine turnover in the country. That is absolutely unacceptable—

I want to carry on from where my colleague Mr Mallard left off, perhaps with some alteration to the form of language that he used. Part 1 of the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill is the preliminary provisions, and it deals specifically in clause 3(1) with the purpose of the bill. The purpose of the bill, according to this, is “to provide economic benefits to New Zealanders by improving New Zealand’s capability to host medium- to large-scale international conferences and related exhibitions through the construction and operation of an international-standard convention centre.” Well, there is not a huge amount in that to disagree with. There can be some debate about convention centres and just how much they add to the economy, but the notion that an international-standard convention centre would be built in Auckland is not one that members on this side of the Chamber have a great deal of difficulty with.

But that is not really the purpose of the bill. In fact, clause 3 is quite misleading in beginning with that, because it then says “to this end” and then tells us what the bill does, and what the bill does is create a situation where one company is favoured above all others in New Zealand. One company is singled out. This is the classic crony capitalism of the National Party—picking off one company and saying: “We’ll do a special deal, and, what’s more, when we do this special deal we will have an agreement with them that totally contravenes New Zealand’s gambling legislation.”

I want to make reference to that now. In clause 4(1) we see a definition of “gambling law”, that being the Gambling Act 2003 and any regulation related to that Act. In the regulatory impact statement, we learnt from officials that they put up, as an option, the possibility of amending the Gambling Act in order to make the changes that this bill facilitates. The Government decided that it could not because it contravenes the Gambling Act, because the Gambling Act is designed to reduce gambling harm. There is no way that even the officials could argue in the regulatory impact statement that this bill reduces gambling harm, because it does not; it increases gambling harm. We have had reports from the officials that tell us that there will be up to 5,000 to 8,000 additional problem gamblers as a result of this piece of legislation. So the Government could not even amend the Gambling Act to do this. It had to create its own legislation for this dodgy deal, which goes against the very principles of that legislation.

The purpose clause of this bill then goes into the agreement between the Crown and Skycity. As I said, on this side of the Chamber, the idea of building a convention centre in Auckland is something we could support. But when we look at the Deputy Auditor-General’s report into this, what we see is that, quite clearly, Skycity was treated differently from others who sought to be part of building that convention centre. This agreement that is referred to here in the purpose clause is an agreement that cuts across what is good process, and that is exactly what the Deputy Auditor-General said. If you are Ngāti Whātua or Infratil and you were interested in being part of the convention centre, this report makes shocking reading, because what it shows—

💬 Hon Tau Henare: They’re not going to have a Ngāti Whātua room, though, are they?

I would not want to know what you would do in there, Mr Henare, but what I do know is that Ngāti Whātua were not treated fairly when it came to the building of this convention centre. This convention centre could have been built by an iwi with a huge interest in the Auckland area. But no—John Key came along and he intervened, and what this report shows is John Key’s intervention. He got hold of that paper and he wrote on the top of it “Close off the Skycity angle first.” His officials, from that moment on, worked only with Skycity and held meetings only with Skycity. The other bidders did not get that opportunity. That is crony capitalism and that is the style of this National Government.

The agreement, as it is outlined in clause 3(2)(a)(i) and (ii), tells us that the main purpose is “the granting of changes to the regulatory regime applying to the SKYCITY Casino at Auckland;”. It is an innocuous phrase that is actually about adding a huge amount to the bottom line of Skycity, above and beyond anything that it might spend in the building of this convention centre, because as we go down to the interpretation clause, it talks about 30 June 2048, which will be the point at which this agreement will come to its end, allegedly, although clause 4(1)(d) actually allows the concessions to continue beyond 30 June 2048. Trevor Mallard will probably still be in Parliament, part-way through his parliamentary career at that point, but that is a very long distance into the future to undertake—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Clearly approaching the mid-point.

Yes, mid-point, so there is some time to go. But that is a very long way in the future for these regulatory concessions to be granted. What those regulatory concessions do is expand the number of gaming tables and the number of gaming machines to the extent that we are talking about percentage increases for the whole of the gaming tables in New Zealand of around 8 percent just from this deal. So this is a hugely significant regulatory concession that is noted here.

But it is more than that. It goes beyond just a regulatory concession. It actually sets up an unlevel playing field in New Zealand around the gambling industry. That is why the Government could not even manage to amend the gambling law, as it is stated in clause 4 of the bill. The purpose of this bill is not just to build an international-standard convention centre; the purpose of this bill is to give Skycity concessions that nobody else has, that contravene New Zealand’s gambling laws, and that will increase gambling harm, and all for what—all for what?

If a member of the Government gets up today and tells us that the economic benefits to New Zealanders, as they are outlined in clause 3, include employment, let us not buy into that for a minute. Let us not buy into that for a minute, because from the beginning of this, we have had wildly exaggerated claims from the Prime Minister of how many jobs would be created—300, 500, 900. Well, guess what? It is 18—18 jobs. That is what it is worth. The 18 jobs are the great economic benefit of clause 3 of this bill. That is appalling when it is set alongside the massive harm that will be done to families in New Zealand from this—the thousands of extra problem gamblers and their families.

When you go into the prisons of New Zealand, you will find people who are there as a result of their problem-gambling issues. When you go into mental health institutions in New Zealand, you will find people there as a result of their issues with gambling. The irresponsibility of this Government to trade away a law for 18 jobs and a massive windfall profit to Skycity is completely shameful.

Part 1 of this bill is the part that misleads New Zealanders by saying that the purpose of this bill is to establish an international-standard convention centre. That could be done without any of the regulatory concessions that are in this bill. That could be done without massively increasing the gambling harm in New Zealand. But no—the National Government made a conscious choice to go after an agreement with Skycity over and above any of the other bidders who might have been able to put their case forward in this bill. That is the wrong way to go about economic development, because the name for that is crony capitalism. The name for that is a rort of the system, a rort of the process, that started at the very top with the Prime Minister and his officials, who made sure that Skycity got the inside running.

We actually cannot particularly blame Skycity for this. This is a private business that has gone after the best possible deal and outcome for it and its shareholders. The problem is that the other group at the negotiating table, the Government, was not looking out for its shareholders, for the taxpayers. It was not looking out for the citizens of New Zealand; it was just there to do another shabby deal. So on one side of the table you have got the tough commercial negotiators; on the other side of the table you have got a Government that is failing to act in the interest of New Zealanders and is failing to protect New Zealanders from gambling harm.

This is not a piece of legislation that supports the values of New Zealanders. It is not a piece of legislation that upholds other gambling law. Part 1 of this bill is just plain wrong. It does not meet the purpose that is stated here and it allows an agreement to be written into law that goes against the interests of New Zealanders.

I am very pleased to take the first of a number of calls on this legislation, the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill. I have a number of amendments to this bill in Part 2, but here in Part 1 I am particularly concerned about the purpose clause and the apparent overarching purpose of this legislation, which is to provide economic benefits to New Zealanders. We have had a very close look at the economic benefits, from the papers that have been provided to us, and I can tell you now that I do not know whether Mr Key and Mr Joyce deliberately misinformed the House over the number of jobs that would be created, but they certainly did misinform the House. There is no paper that is available to anyone but them—perhaps they are still keeping that one secret—that describes the number of jobs as they have said. They have claimed 800 jobs as a result of the final convention centre, and they have claimed 1,000 jobs that will be created as part of its construction. This is supposedly part of the great economic benefit to New Zealanders from this deal. Well, let us just have a look at the information that has been provided.

They first relied on the Horwath report. There is nothing in the Horwath report that describes those numbers of jobs. They then relied on the KordaMentha report that was produced earlier this year. That report does say that it looked at the economic benefits. It does not describe 800 jobs in the convention centre or 1,000 jobs in the construction phase—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: They relied entirely on Skycity for information.

That is right, Mr Mallard. The report says: “The financial analysis of both the NZICC and the regulatory concessions are based on an Excel Model dated 18 April 2013 … prepared by SkyCity.” So the KordaMentha report was based entirely on information from the one organisation that is about to get hundreds of millions of dollars of benefit from this deal. Still that report does not talk about 800 jobs in the convention centre or 1,000 jobs in its construction.

Then we look to the Government’s own information that it provides to the public to help inform the public around the economic benefits of this deal, and we go to the regulatory impact statement, which provides that information. We see here, actually, the description of the 800 jobs and the 1,000 jobs. It says here, in paragraph 9 of the regulatory impact statement, that “(… around 800 people) would be employed by the convention centre, with up to 1000 workers employed in the construction phase.”, and then there is a little note, footnote 8, on the regulatory impact statement. So let us look at footnote 8 to see where the evidence is that shows that there will be 800 jobs and 1,000 jobs. That little footnote refers to two things. It refers, first, to table 1 in a New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report, and it also refers to information that has been supplied to the Government by Skycity. It says “(… received from a leading NZ-based contractor)”, but it does not provide the paper, it does not provide the name of that contractor, and it does not provide the evidence.

Let us have a look first at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research paper that the regulatory impact statement refers to as justification for this misleading—and I still think deliberately misleading—statement around job creation. What does the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research paper say? Oh, it does not say 800 jobs in the convention centre. It does not say 1,000 jobs in the construction of the convention centre. Actually, it says that there will be 380 full-time jobs in construction and 340 full-time equivalents once the convention centre is operating. So somehow Skycity has created out of who knows what—thin air—an additional 160 people who will apparently be working at the convention centre, and an extra 600 people have been invented by Skycity, and agreed to by the Government, as evidence to back up this claim of 1,000 jobs in construction. This is a deliberate attempt to mislead New Zealanders on the economic impacts of this deal. John Key and Steven Joyce have spent months and months and months telling New Zealanders that there are thousands of jobs in this convention centre, and yet the only piece of genuinely independent advice that this Government has, and the only genuine advice that it has released to the public, says that they are not telling the truth. There simply are not the jobs that they claim.

So what are we giving up here? What are we giving up in exchange for this misinformation about job creation? I can give you some numbers of some other people who will be affected by the legislation—people who will not have any choices about how they are involved, people who will actually be harmed by this legislation. They are the 6,500 children who the Government’s own papers say are likely to be harmed by the problem gambling that is caused by this deal—6,500 children. Those children do actually exist. They are not the made-up people—the made-up workers—whom Skycity and the Government have been talking about. They are children whose lives will be affected, and in some cases very damaged, for most of their lives as a result of this deal.

Where do they sit? Where is the analysis of the economic impact on them, the social impact on them, from this deal? Actually, there is not any. The Government looked to KordaMentha for some of this information. KordaMentha said that it was not engaged to assess the social harm of this deal. The Minister for Economic Development himself has said that he sought no advice on the economic harm that could be caused by this deal. I do not know whether he is telling the truth, frankly, because there have been so many mistruths told around this deal. Maybe he did seek the advice and is not prepared to release it. Maybe he did not seek the advice because he does not want to know. All he has been prepared to talk about are the mistruths around the job creation and not the reality for the 6,500 children who his own advisers have said will be affected by this legislation. Where is their voice here? Is it only the Opposition that cares about the 6,500 New Zealand children who could be affected by this bill? There is no way that it is justifiable to claim any kind of economic benefit from this deal when the numbers of jobs are being deliberately made up and spread around the country and when the real numbers of the people actually affected are being ignored by the people who are making the decisions.

There is a whole range of economic advice that comes from this legislation and out of the papers that have been released, and all of it flies in the face of the statements made by the Government. Even if we just want to look at comparisons, we have comparisons, for example, with convention centres overseas. The 3,500 capacity convention centre in Sydney employs only 200 full-time equivalents, not the 800 that Steven Joyce and John Key are claiming. Melbourne’s 5,000 capacity convention centre employs just 133 people full-time. It has 270 casual workers and 130 full-timers, and yet Steven Joyce somehow thinks that a smaller centre here in New Zealand is going to employ 800 people. He is actually interested in the deal being done, not in the reality for New Zealanders and for Aucklanders. He is not prepared to tell the country the whole story around the genuine economic impacts and the genuine economic harm. Why does he mistrust New Zealanders so much? Why does he believe that New Zealanders are too stupid to identify these failings, these mistruths, in what he has said? Why will he not tell the truth? If it is such a good deal, why keep information secret? Why not tell New Zealanders the truth about the jobs? Maybe New Zealanders will think that it is still worth it if there are 340 jobs, not 800. Maybe they will. What is the harm in treating New Zealanders like they are intelligent people who can make a genuine assessment about the effects, good and bad, of this convention centre? Why put all this spin and mistruth over it? It is because there is an inherent mistrust by this Government of New Zealanders and New Zealanders’ ability to assess the information and to make an intelligent decision about what they think is necessary.

We do not want a Government that does that. We do not want a Government that treats New Zealanders in such a shabby way. We do not want a Government that is going to put 6,500 children at risk for, at best, 18 new jobs in the New Zealand economy. That is what the research actually says. That is what the table that the Government has referred to actually says. There will be 18 new jobs in the New Zealand economy—

I do find it incredible when I hear that figure of 18 new jobs. I do think that those members of the Commerce Committee who were there on the last day of hearings will recall the gentleman who came in and refuted those figures. I think that is important to actually acknowledge. Horwath HTL, in its report, when it analysed the benefit of having a convention centre—which I believe Auckland Council wants to have, and I think that the Labour Party wants to have, as we certainly do—said that there would be an estimated increase of $85 million in tourism-related expenditure per year. It is very hard to think that $85 million extra could be spent and create only 18 new jobs.

Think about the tourists who will come to Auckland City and to this nation for a conference or a convention that may be 3 or 4 days long but who might like to stay for 10 days or 2 weeks. They might stay not just in Auckland; perhaps they might go to Rotorua, or maybe down to Queenstown, and certainly to Taranaki to visit that beautiful place down there. They are going to be spending money. They are going to be spending money in cafes, in shops, and in retail centres. They are going to be needing transport. They are going to be needing accommodation. All of these are spin-offs for our economy throughout our nation as we see extra people come to this nation. That is why the purpose clause of the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill says: “The overarching purpose of this Act is to provide economic benefits to New Zealanders”—New Zealanders out there who work in tourism and in hospitality and who are retailers in our nation.

It is quite easy just to become singularly focused on a few single issues. Let me just talk about why this is important. We want to see employment grow in our nation. We are already seeing the lift happen, which is fantastic, and I think New Zealanders can be encouraged that the financial stewardship of this Government, going through 5 very difficult years, is starting to see some benefits roll through in our economies.

💬 Dr David Clark: Five long years.

Five great years—5 great years after 9 bad years. We are starting to see this economy fire up. What I think we need to understand is that it is hard decisions like this that can create employment opportunities that can better people.

I want to just touch on a few points, because the economic well-being of this country is very important to every single one of us. I talked yesterday—and I want to raise it again—about the issue and the social harm of unemployment. We need to understand that the people who have unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, struggle immensely. They have very poor social outcomes. They suffer depression, loss of confidence, and poor health, and they can become suicidal. Let us not negate that. Let us not negate that. Let us not just ignore that, because unemployment is an issue that we want to address in this country.

As I read yesterday—and let me read it again—from Policy Quarterly November 2010, Clair Mills from the University of Auckland said in her article “Health, Employment and Recession” that “Increasing unemployment is associated with a wide range of adverse social outcomes, particularly when prolonged.”

💬 Carol Beaumont: What has that got to do with this bill?

What has this got to do with the bill? This bill is about the economic development and growth of this nation. It is about job creation—far more than the 18 jobs that these people on the other side keep parroting on about. It is hard to think that you could have $85 million come into a country per year and you would get 18 jobs out of that. Come on—use your common sense and realise that it is going to feed through our economy and that we are going to see people all over this nation who are going to receive the benefit.

It is also important to see in clause 3(2)(a)(iii) in Part 1—that point there, which you see in the bill underlined—where it is stated in the “Purpose and outline” of the bill is that there is an “imposition of obligations on SKYCITY to adopt certain harm minimisation and anti-money laundering mechanisms;”.

💬 Kris Faafoi: What a sop.

That is not a sop. In fact, there are people in Australia and New Zealand who are the experts in this field, who say that this obligation placed upon Skycity creates an opportunity to address some of the harm by having new technologies and new tools available to mitigate and address the harm issues.

We need to also understand, when you look at the issue of harm regarding pokies in particular, that 70 percent of the harm happens outside of casinos. There is a huge amount of gambling that takes place with online gambling, which has no surveillance and no support for people who get hooked up in that. What we see here is a development of some technologies and some tools that, as they develop and are brought to bear on the situation, can bring some recognition of harm and bring some result of being able to address these issues that I think all of us do not want to see happen, when it comes to harm in people’s lives.

As we come to this outline here, once again I say that one of the big issues in our country that we want to overcome is unemployment, and we must have steps that are going to create economic activity and growth. I believe that we can get the balance right in this. It is a difficult balance, but we can get it right and we can ensure that people come through this and get employment and get work in the construction, hospitality, tourism, and retail areas in our society. Thank you.

It is interesting to follow that member Jonathan Young, who chaired the Commerce Committee on the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill, and to hear some of the claims that he was making, which I wish to refute now. One in particular is that the number of jobs—18—was refuted in that select committee. It may have been refuted, per se—somebody may have said: “I don’t accept that number.”—but there was certainly no evidence presented that was convincing to say that the independent research by the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research was not, in fact, dead on the mark. That independent research said that conventions would be drawn from other places in the country and that regions further around, outside Auckland, would suffer as a consequence of this centre being built—that they would lose jobs as a consequence of this centre being built. The New Zealand Institute for Economic Research, as an independent body, estimated that there would be a net 18 jobs created by this legislation at a cost of $402 million—$402 million—and most of that paid off the back of problem gambling.

This is an appalling bill. This is an absolutely appalling bill. Its purposes, as they are laid out in the bill itself, are difficult to argue with. If we look at Part 1, it says that “The overarching purpose of this Act is to provide economic benefits to New Zealanders …” by providing some capability to host these conventions. Who could argue with that, on the surface? It is just that when we dig into it, it does not quite stack up. It does not stack up. The Government would not hear that. It would not hear about the harm. At the select committee a ragtag group of MPs blocked submissions. They blocked the officials from the Department of Internal Affairs from coming, who had shown in the official papers that were released that they had expertise on this matter. They blocked the Ministry of Health officials, the people who understood gambling-related harm, from coming to speak to the committee. They blocked the Gambling Commission and its people who deal with this stuff, who are at the hard end, and who understand the gambling-related harm that will fund the building of this convention centre from coming to the committee. And they blocked Treasury officials, for goodness’ sake, from coming to this committee, most probably because Treasury was very clear that the public benefits did not accrue in the amount that one would expect and that the private gain would far exceed those public benefits. Treasury is normally right there with the Government, fighting hand in hand, but this time the committee did not want to hear from Treasury’s officials. There was a majority on the committee that blocked those officials. All those MPs who blocked it had in common a little “N”—a little “N” lapel badge. It was an “N” for “Not listening”, and beans in their ears—beans in their ears, I say.

That is unfortunate because if the Government really believed in this legislation—if it really believed that this was the way to go—it would not have tried to bury it. It would not have tried to hide the officials. It would not have stopped people from being critical. It would have let all of the facts come out into the open. It would have let the debate proceed. But, instead, it tried to shut down the debate in the select committee time after time after time. When later on one of my Green colleagues asked whether we could perhaps just have some updated advice from the Ministry of Health, some advice that looked at the bill now that it had been changed and now that more facts are out in the open, that too was blocked. They were not even asking to have the officials come there but for a simple piece of advice advising on health concerns, and that was blocked by members of the select committee. That is a shameful thing. I say shame to those members of the committee who blocked us from getting advice on the harms that will be caused by this legislation.

No one in this Parliament, I do not think—and I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong—thinks that building an international convention centre is of itself a bad idea. Having the ability to host conventions is a reasonable proposition. It is simply the fact that the proposal is to pay for this convention centre through problem gambling that really has us uncomfortable. It is a conscience vote, I understand, but I would be very surprised if it was not very strongly opposed on this side of the Chamber. This Government is pushing a very bad deal on New Zealanders. The papers that have been supplied and the regulatory impact statement indicate that 8,000 people, effectively, will be harmed by these changes through the impacts of problem gambling. That, as we have heard, is for the creation of just a net 18 jobs in the economy. Of course, there will be a confidence variant around that number of 18 jobs. It might be lower than that. It might be a few higher. It might actually be none, in which case we will see that this language in the purpose clause right at the start of the bill, which talks about providing economic benefits to New Zealanders, will not hold up to the light of day.

The other thing I want to say about these economic benefits that are outlined at the start of the bill is that they have been questioned in the debate that has ensued in the media. We have an article on Stuff by Matt Nippert that draws attention to the way these things are handled in Australia. Over there they tend to make sure they get independent advice. They do not get all of the facts and figures about the benefits from the person who is bidding for the contract; they go and get independent advice on the economic benefits so that a fair decision can be made about the worthiness or otherwise of the tender. An expert on these things, Mr Kale from Bond University, said that Skycity got an incredibly good deal out of the Government. He said that it is a clear win for Skycity. He said of Mr Morrison that “He’s a friend, but if you want to quote me you can say: ‘Morrison did an excellent job negotiating with authorities.’ ” The estimate that was in the documents supplied by the Crown shows that the deal ends up at $68 million in Skycity’s favour, and that is a risk premium.

But that is not the worst of it, because it is actually more than that. If we look at the overseas examples, in Australia the estimates for this kind of deal are much higher. We see in Sydney that there was an outfit called Echo Entertainment Group, which paid $700 million for a licence extension, the likes of which we have Skycity paying about $90 million for. There is a huge discrepancy there. That pattern is replicated across Australia. For exclusive rights to run this kind of pokie outfit, the Australians demand much more money for the taxpayer, but that gets away from the very fact that this is actually a moral issue. It is the harm that is caused that is the bit that I think most people in this Parliament object to. Putting this convention centre on the back of problem gamblers will have serious impacts on our communities. It will cause deaths, suicides, and murders, the likes of which Mr Mallard referred to earlier. We know this because the evidence says that that is what happens, and it is highly quantifiable internationally. There is a huge literature around the impacts of problem gambling.

This is a terrible bill. The way it is outlined in the beginning might lead us to think that it had economic benefits of a significant nature that were somehow worthy of taking the risk of running with it, but we know that that is not actually the case, because the case simply does not stack up. The independent research has not been done that would say that was the case. The Government has got itself into a political corner, and now it feels that it must get the deal through to try to save face, to try to show that it is doing something to stimulate the economy, because it currently has the worst economic record of any Government in the last 50 years, and that record is shameful.

It is a Government that is struggling. New Zealanders are waking up—well, they woke up long ago, but they are getting frustrated, I should say, with the lack of progress by this Government when it had the circumstances, following 9 years of surpluses from a Labour Government, to actually build New Zealand into the kind of country that we all want to live in, with a chance for no one to be left behind. But, instead, we have the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and those who are really at the bottom getting more debt lumped on them through gambling debt. That is the vision of this Government—a visionless Government. It is making deals. It is trying to get this legislation through, but it will lead only to more harm for New Zealanders who are struggling the most. I personally will be opposing this bill because I do not feel that in my conscience I could support it.

There ought to have been a transparent process around it. We know from the start that Mr Key met with the Skycity people and gave them the inside running on the legislation. That also meant that the taxpayer did not get a look-in through a fair process of having other tenderers bid for it to see what else might have been on the table. That means that the Government put itself over a barrel in the negotiation process. It had only one party that it was talking to. That party spelled out the terms, and the Government is sitting there with its head down, bearing it, swallowing, and trying to get on with the job. It is a shameful day for this country. It is a shameful piece of legislation. We should not be having it go through this House. I say to those members opposite that I hope they examine their consciences and I hope that some of them are willing to cross the floor, particularly those who live in electorates where this gambling harm will hit the hardest. I think of Sam Lotu-Iiga and others in the Auckland constituencies, who know very well that the communities they represent will be harmed by this legislation.

It is my pleasure to give a contribution on this New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill. It is something that I feel really strongly about as someone who is resident in the area where this convention centre will exist. I fear that in all of the debate the overall principle, the debate around the existence of a convention centre or not, has definitely been blurred by the Government. So I want to come back to that original question because the Government has continually maintained this line that the choice was either trade off the gambling harm issues to get the convention centre or nothing—or nothing. It has maintained that the choice was economic development via the Skycity convention centre and a bit of gambling harm on the side, or potential job losses and net economic loss to the country on the flip side. That is completely wrong, and that is completely misleading.

The rest of the country could be forgiven for having just that small view of this entire picture because the Government did not talk about the other options on the table, because, in reality, the Prime Minister never really considered them. In fact, the Government probably never really considered them, but they existed.

In fact, many months ago now I put in an Official Information Act request for what some of those options were. I had a personal interest in some of them because some of them may have led to quid pro quos that could have been a net benefit to the city in which I live, including the Aotea Centre deal. I want to go through some of those so that the public know that they are not forced into the ridiculous situation of choosing harm for the sake of 18 jobs when, actually, we could have had the convention centre without this dodgy deal.

Back when it was originally floated that the Government was interested in a convention centre, that there was a belief that there was a gap in the market, there was an opportunity for some other options to be raised. At that time probably the most seriously considered options were from the likes of Ngāti Whātua, who had some plans for land that they owned—I believe on the waterfront was where they were originally thinking. There was the potential for them to then partner with the council and the Government in the development of a convention centre there.

The other option that got a little bit of air time—a little bit of air time—was the idea that we have the entire Aotea Centre in the middle of Auckland City, operated by The Edge. Some might say it is an underutilised resource, but it is a resource that in recent times has had significant investment in it. There is a recognition that at the moment that centre is fulfilling quite a specific job—that it does house, for instance, Opera New Zealand and the Royal New Zealand Ballet and so on—and that if you did pitch the Aotea Centre to be an international convention centre, you may need to provide some alternative facilities. So the idea that was put forward was that we could turn the Aotea Centre into an international convention centre, give it the alterations that it would require—and it would require some—and at the same time restore the St James Theatre to pick up the alternative role that that convention centre therefore would no longer be able to provide.

I see only win-win in a suggestion like that. We would not have had to pass law in this Parliament to allow for additional pokie tables to come into play in order to have that deal. We would not have had mass protest from the public, who know what we are trading off in this Parliament today off the back of that deal. But that is not the deal that the Government chose to select. So be under no illusion that this was the only option on the table. It was not. Be under no illusion that the only way we could have had economic development and jobs was through this trade-off. It was not. That, in my mind, exposes how dodgy this deal is, because there were other options.

I want to speak a little bit to clause 3 in Part 1, the “Purpose and outline”. It says that “(1) The overarching purpose of this Act is to provide economic benefits to New Zealanders by improving New Zealand’s capability to host medium- to large-scale international conferences and related exhibitions through the construction and operation of an international-standard convention centre; (2) To this end, the Act—”, and then it follows on, giving the agreement with Skycity. As I have already said, it is very unusual to have to pass a law to build a convention centre in this way. That therefore implies that the economic benefits were, of course, attached only to the Skycity deal.

That is why I want to reflect on the process that we went through in order to get Part 1 in the first place. In order to find that I would like to go back to some of the statements that were made in the lead-up to this, even before this got to the Commerce Committee, because we did have some analysis of the process that we went through in order to get to this place. Let us perhaps go through that process in which we established the economic benefit.

In August 2009 there was a feasibility study as to whether or not a new international convention centre would be of value. It was for the Ministry of Economic Development and Auckland City Council. It was at that time that I heard the vague discussions about this potential deal. It was in that same month that John Key was briefed on the study’s findings and officials recommended that there was a business case that sat around it. That was in August 2009. We know that by the end of August officials had been made aware of a proposal being developed by Skycity to expand its own convention facilities. Key then writes by hand, when they were talking about the proposals and looking at feasibility, that “We should close off the Skycity angle first.” He handwrites that “We should close off the Skycity angle first.” If that does not indicate that there was already an ingrained preference before any of this had gone anywhere, I do not know what does.

We know that by the end of that year, by 4 November, John Key had had dinner with members of the Skycity board, and he says that they discussed a possible national convention centre. They raised issues relating to the Gambling Act 2003. That is an interesting point because we are debating now the very amendments that the Prime Minister was already talking about back at the end of that year, 2009.

But here is a really important point: the tender process had not started. Expressions of interest were not called for until March the next year, but already the Prime Minister was having discussions and talking about regulatory trade-offs with Skycity. If regulatory trade-offs were part of what the Government was interested in entertaining in order to have the convention centre built, was that part of the tender process? Were any of the other interested parties told that if they were interested, they could perhaps put forward a package that was not just about building a facility and doing up the St James Theatre? For instance, Vector Arena might have been interested in building another facility in exchange for some regulatory trade-offs in electricity. But did Vector know that this was an option? It absolutely did not, because this was a deal just for Skycity specifically. We know that from the time line that has already been exposed.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Auckland Airport.

Auckland Airport may have wanted to do that—there were a range of parties—but we never knew about that. The other parties did not even know about that.

In that same month, when the expressions had gone out, the Government suggested that the current arrangement with Auckland City Council to follow up the jointly funded feasibility study must end, even though $250,000 had already been set aside for the feasibility study. In May we then had the open tender process. By September Skycity was asking the Government about buying some of the land required in order to go ahead with the convention centre it was proposing.

I actually could go on. I have got pages and pages more of the time line. But, as you can see, before the convention centre tender process had even closed, Skycity was talking to the Government about buying land to build its convention centre. Before the tender process had even opened, the Prime Minister was talking about amendments to the Gambling Act. It is no wonder that the Deputy Auditor-General said of the process: “We do not consider that the evaluation process was transparent or even-handed.” I am going to read that again; I think it is an important point. The Deputy Auditor-General said: “We do not consider that the evaluation process was transparent or even-handed.”

This side of the Chamber does not just throw around the words “dodgy deal” for nothing. We say them because the evidence exists. Mr Joyce may lurch in his chair with what appears to be laughter—I cannot be quite sure—but these are the facts that are before us. We know from the time line—we so rarely see what could be anything other than a smug smile from the Minister; it is hard to know. We based what we have said around the tender process on the facts, the evidence, the Cabinet papers, and the process, and all of it leads us to the impression that it was a dodgy deal. But it did not have to be this way. We could have had the convention—

I rise to take a call, my first call for the evening, on Part 1 of the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill. I am going to concentrate this part of my speech around the economic benefits, and I take note of the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, and her discourse around how this deal started out and the lack of transparency around it.

At the time when the discussions were first occurring with the Government about the need for a convention centre, I was an Auckland City councillor. It was definitely on the table that there should be negotiating between the council, the private sector, and also the Government to look at the economic benefits of a convention centre.

If there is a good economic argument for a convention centre, then we would certainly support it, but what we are seeing with this bill is an economic argument that has not taken the costs into account. I am not an economist; I do not dabble in that dark art. However, any normal person would first do a cost-benefit analysis before agreeing upon a certain course of action that would cost New Zealanders. The costs of this deal are externalised, and it is the New Zealand taxpayers who will be bearing those costs while the provider of the convention centre, who keeps the convention centre and who keeps the profits of the convention centre, also profits from harm that is caused to ordinary New Zealand citizens.

The purpose and outline of this bill, as it says in clause 3, in Part 1, is that “The overarching purpose … is to provide economic benefits to New Zealanders”. Do those economic benefits include the 5,000 convictions last year that were made in respect of people who had gambling problems? That was gambling problem - related crime. The cost of that is not only to the people who were the victims of that crime, which was committed to fuel gambling problems, but also to us, the taxpayers. For every criminal who is convicted and spends a year in jail it costs $91,000. We can assume that with an extra 230 pokie machines, with an extra 12 automated gambling tables, which each have 20 seats and so are, in effect, another 20 pokie machines per automated table, as well as with 60 more tables—

💬 Metiria Turei: 40 more.

—40 more tables; I stand corrected—there will be more problem gamblers as a result.

It is not going to be solely the convention centre attendees who will be gambling there. We know from all the reports that the Health Sponsorship Council has done, and from experts both in New Zealand and internationally, that 40 percent of the profits that Skycity will get from those extra gambling concessions will come from people who have no control over their gambling behaviour. For our Government to say that that is what we will pay, that that is how we will pay for this convention centre, is morally bankrupt—it is morally bankrupt.

The bill does not take into account the economic costs that we will all bear from the suicides, from family violence, from domestic violence, and from child neglect. It does not take those costs into account. These are the things that we need to be looking at if we are going to pass legislation that endangers, and it will endanger, New Zealand citizens. This is bad lawmaking.

If we are looking at job creation, we have already heard that the reports that the officials themselves provided have said that the benefits for the country as a whole amount to only 18 jobs. I guess if you wanted to be cynical you could look at the other jobs that have not been taken into account. They include the jobs across the road from the Skycity Casino, at the Chow brothers’ brothel. They include the increase in jobs for the budgeting service that will be dealing with the families of the problem gamblers. They include the jobs that will be needed to provide counselling for those who are suffering from problem gambling. They include the jobs in the corrections service. They include the jobs that mop up after problem gambling. If those were the jobs that the Government was counting, then at least we would have an honest assessment—an honest cost-benefit analysis—of this deal in its total, because what we are seeing is not economic benefits to New Zealanders.

I think there has been some comment about the negotiation and how poorly it was done. I think that needs to be taken into account when we are considering the economic benefits. What we have here is a deal that extends the 35-year casino licence by 27 years. Each year of an extension of a licence is worth millions of dollars. We know from Australia that that is something that the Government should have been negotiating. The cost of the convention centre is just over $400 million. Skycity is estimated to recoup the cost within 4 years, based on the 25 percent increase in gambling opportunities that these concessions are delivering to it. We have sold ourselves cheaply. Not only have we sold ourselves down the river, and our citizens down the tubes, because we are carrying the cost of the deal but also we have been incredibly cheap in the licence that we have given Skycity. I guess we should also take into consideration the fact that this Government has not considered the longer-term costs that we will all bear. So over these 35 years we are stuck with it.

The Greens have said that we will be looking for ways to minimise harm. We will come to that in the second part of this Committee stage today. My colleague Metiria Turei, co-leader of the Greens, and I both have Supplementary Order Papers that we hope will get support across the House. If we are to rely on problem gambling as the way for Skycity to be paying for this deal, and we are not actually attempting to reduce it, then as lawmakers we are being remiss in our duties.

One of the things that does concern me, I think, is the fact that the economic benefits have been so highly ramped up. They have been so inflated beyond what is actually accurate that we have tended to lose sight of what is happening in gambling as a whole. We are tending to put forward legislation that will undermine our Gambling Act, to some extent. That is really worrying because the Gambling Act is there solely to reduce harm from gambling. Yet we are seeing an attempt, with this legislation, the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill, to give concessions to Skycity that undermine our position on that. That is one of the reasons why one of our Supplementary Order Papers, Supplementary Order Paper 383, talks about that as well.

Several speakers on that side of the Chamber have talked about the flow-on economic benefits. In the second reading yesterday we had people from other centres saying that the convention centre will result in additional tourism opportunities in their small towns. We have not seen the proof of that. We know that there are other convention centres across the country that will be competing for convention centre attendees. Unlike Auckland, people who go to a convention in Queenstown will not be going to a centre that was paid for through the suffering of children.

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Oh!

If the member finds that too emotive, I suggest he looks at the facts as they were presented by the officials: 6,500 children are estimated to be put at risk as a result of this deal, Minister. I suggest you take that on board when you cast your vote, because it is a conscience vote and we will be wanting you to think with your conscience and to exercise it. It is not just children who suffer. International—

I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am going to call Kris Faafoi. He is on the Commerce Committee. We are going to hear Kris Faafoi.

Thank you very much for the chance to speak to Part 1 of the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill. In his comments during his contribution, Mr Young talked about the benefits in terms of this deal and addressing unemployment. He said that this Government has been willing to sign this deal to make sure that there are employment opportunities for New Zealanders. Well, I would ask Mr Young and other members of the National Party why they have not intervened to this extent when there have been job losses in the previous 5 years of their Government—that is, to sign a deal of this nature to the point of signing away a $402 million convention centre to create employment for New Zealanders. Where was the Government when the train yards down in Dunedin were in grief and those Hillside workers were looking for some hope from this Government? Where was the Government? It was nowhere to be seen at all, washing its hands clean of a problem, with people losing their jobs. But here, the Government member over there, Mr Young, was quite happy to say that the Government would intervene to do a deal with Skycity to make sure that there are employment opportunities, to address the unemployment problem that we have here in New Zealand.

A number of people have mentioned in this debate that a convention centre for New Zealand might be a very good idea, and that it might be able to draw the likes of international trade shows to New Zealand, bringing international visitors here to New Zealand. But the question that we on this side of the Chamber have is did we have to sell off, to a huge effect, our ability to regulate gambling, and also to make laws here in New Zealand, in order to do that? We on this side of the equation and on this side of the Chamber say that we did not have to.

This is a conscience vote. There are some members on the other side of the Chamber who do come from constituencies where gambling harm does hit disproportionately hard. I am speaking about members such as Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, and I do acknowledge that he has had a family death. But besides that, Sam has a responsibility as a member of Parliament to represent his community. The officials who were advising the Commerce Committee on this did point out in point 86 of the regulatory impact statement that the increase in the number of pokie machines will hit the likes of Māori and Pasifika communities harder. I know that Mr Lotu-Iiga represents Maungakiekie, where there is a very high percentage of Pasifika people. So I think that this being a conscience vote, Mr Lotu-Iiga should look at the harm that this bill will have on the Pasifika and Māori communities within his electorate, and choose wisely when we are asked to vote on this bill.

As other members have pointed out in this debate on Part 1, the deal that has been signed between the Crown and Skycity will see over 230 more machines. The deal between the Crown and Skycity will extend its licence for another 27 years in Auckland—a city that, I must say, has the highest Pasifika population in the country—and will allow another 40 extra gaming tables. The deal goes on to give many more concessions to Skycity in response to building the convention centre.

Unfortunately, in all of this, the Pasifika community will be hit very hard. I do call on the consciences of other Pasifika members on the other side of the Chamber to think very wisely about the impact that this will have on our communities and the harm it will cause to families—and, as Denise Roche says, to the children in those families—by signing off this deal. By signing off this deal, we are saying that we are OK with harm in those communities—we are OK with harm in those communities. So, for the Pasifika members on the other side of the Chamber, I make a special plea to you to think very wisely before you do vote on this issue.

I turn now to some of the machinations of how this agreement—or dodgy deal—came about between Skycity and the Government. In fact, if I were sitting in the Skycity boardroom at the moment, I would be very happy. The Government has completely and utterly sold out in terms of the deal, because what Skycity gets for the cost is a great deal. We have sold ourselves short here, because the Government has sold out in a big way. Mr Young was talking about the spin-offs in terms of addressing unemployment. We get nowhere close to a good deal in terms of employment, Mr Young, and I know that in the Commerce Committee, which that he chairs, there was some research done by the Institute of Economic Research, prepared for the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Economic Development, that showed that because of the diversion of investment, only 18 more jobs—not 1,800, not 18,000, just—

💬 Carol Beaumont: Not even 180.

Not even 180. Just 18—one-eight—more jobs will be created under this deal. So this Government is playing up very highly the gains of employment from the deal, but it is quite clear from the evidence presented before the select committee that they simply do not exist.

Just turning to some of the politics around this, Mr Key, the Prime Minister, was kind of crowing that this was a good deal. He said that he was totally vindicated when the Deputy Auditor-General investigated how this deal came about. But let us just dig a little deeper, because always with this Government it is the details that catch it out. That is not exactly—

💬 Chris Auchinvole: Ha!

—how the Deputy Auditor-General came to be. For the benefit of Mr Auchinvole, who giggled because maybe he does not know what the Deputy Auditor-General said, I say that the Deputy Auditor-General said that the process of Skycity getting the contract to build the convention centre was—

💬 Chris Auchinvole: I didn’t giggle—guffawed!

He said it himself. I think he said “flawed”. The Deputy Auditor-General said it was flawed and not transparent or even-handed. The report established deficiencies on the part of both Ministers—so I think we are talking about the Minister in the chair and the Prime Minister—and officials. That is not exactly pertaining to the Prime Minister being totally vindicated by the Deputy Auditor-General’s report. It is another instance around the Skycity deal where the Government has been more spin than reality.

We have heard from David Clark, who talked about an expert from a university in Australia—I think from Bond University—who said that Skycity got an incredibly good deal. It shows you just what bad negotiators they are on the other side of the House. It shows you just what bad negotiators they are on the other side of the House, because not only was it a bad business deal but it was bad for our communities—not just in Auckland but right around New Zealand. It showed that this Government would quite easily and happily sell out in the interests of doing a deal to build a convention centre.

There will be 280 more pokie machines and 40 more gaming tables for pretty much zero. I note the harm that that will do to, I think it was, 8,000 more Aucklanders as a result of this convention centre and the increase in the licence to Skycity going ahead. This deal will do harm. It will do harm to the communities in Auckland.

I just want to finish with a plea again to the Pacific Island members on the other side of the House. It is patently obvious that gambling harm hurts our community more, so we will be disproportionately affected by the increase in these pokie machines and these gaming machines, and the extension of the licence that is given to Skycity. It is our community that will get hit harder. So in order to prevent that happening, the members on the other side have an opportunity to stop that today. They can just simply vote against this piece of legislation. So to Alfred Ngaro and to Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, I say do the right thing for your community, because if you do not, sure, you will have your political reputation within your party intact—you did the right thing within your party—but you sold out your community.

I move, That the question be now put.

I want to address another part of clause 3 of the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill, and that is the part that is the tricky way that the Government has got around not amending the Gambling Act. It is worthwhile remembering that the Gambling Act says that there will be no more casinos, there will be no increase in the space that casinos can use for gaming machines, and there will be no more machines or gambling opportunities at casinos. The Gambling Act essentially provides a blanket prohibition on any expansion of any casino.

As was described by my colleagues in Labour, any attempt to change the Gambling Act for just this one business—for Skycity—runs completely contrary to the entire purpose of the Gambling Act. So in order to get around this absolute prohibition for just Skycity, this one business in the gambling industry, the Government has had to do a lot of wording machinations and a bit of management here and there. In clause 3(2)(a)(ii) it discusses the purpose of the agreement, and it provides for “the granting of changes to the regulatory regime applying to the SKYCITY Casino …”. That is how the Government is using this legislation to avoid the prohibitions against expanding the casino business in the Gambling Act.

Many Auckland businesses, I understand, are actually rather frustrated and quite angry at the extent to which Skycity has been given this special privilege by the National Government, by Steven Joyce and John Key. The Government gives Skycity this extra-special deal—worth billions of dollars, actually—through this tricky legislative mechanism to try to avoid the prohibition in the Gambling Act. But what is really important and concerning to us with that is that the purpose of the Gambling Act is to place constraints on gambling operations. Casinos were allowed, eventually, to operate in New Zealand, and part of the social contract that allowed casinos to come to New Zealand was that there would be constraints on them: constraints on how large they would be and constraints in terms of regulation to minimise problem gambling as much as possible. That was the social contract. That is the deal—that they can operate in this country as a legitimate business as long as they adhere to the law.

What we have had with Skycity over the last, I do not know, more than a decade is Skycity continually challenging the Gambling Commission and continually challenging the Gambling Act provisions in an attempt to expand its business. It has, time after time, I understand, taken the Gambling Commission to court to try to get the Gambling Commission’s rules changed so that Skycity can expand its business. Time and time again, the Gambling Act provisions, which place an absolute prohibition on the expansion of its business, have won out. Every single time, Skycity has not been able to get what it wanted. It has not been able to breach the social contract that casinos have with New Zealanders, which allows casinos to operate legitimately here, with some kind of social licence.

Then along comes John Key, who has a few dinners with the Skycity top bosses, and suddenly the entire social contract is blown out of the water. The whole social contract—the social licence that Skycity Casino has to operate in New Zealand—is destroyed over a couple of fancy dinners and a couple of bottles of fancy wine with John Key, because John Key wants a monument to his prime ministership when he eventually goes, after the next election. Skycity finally found the guy who would give it the deal for which it has been fighting for years, which was to get outside the Gambling Act. That is what clause 3 says. It is a “get out of jail free” card for Skycity Casino to avoid the controls that society placed on casinos and the controls that are placed on Skycity.

Those controls are primarily designed to protect New Zealanders from the harm from casino gambling—gambling in general, but casino gambling in particular. They were agreed to because it is globally acknowledged that casino gambling causes harm, that pokie machines are designed to be addictive—they are designed expressly for the purpose of hooking people in and creating an addiction. There is widely known research around the world. So there is a need for legislation to try to curb the harms, and that is what the Gambling Act does. But we have now—

I want, in this part of the New Zealand International Convention Centre Bill and in this contribution, to focus on National Party members and ask them to examine their consciences. [Interruption] Steven Joyce, the promoter of the John Key casino extension, giggles. He giggles at the thought of a National Party member having a conscience, and I think that is disgraceful. He is not an experienced parliamentarian, but most people know, even if they have just read the history of the country, that the National Party has a tradition of allowing its members to have a conscience vote. Members opposite say that we went to the election on the issue. Well, I think that to a certain extent some of them did. Some of them did go to the election. John Key certainly went to the election on a convention centre. But I remind them of the people of integrity, of the National Party of the past, who, notwithstanding going to the election on an issue, had the courage to stand up and say no.

I refer the members to Ralph Hanan. Ralph Hanan was a former Mayor of Invercargill, from memory. He was a Minister of Justice and the Attorney-General in the Holyoake National Party. His party, led by Holyoake, went to the election in 1960 and promised to undo the suspension of capital punishment that had been instituted by the previous Labour Government. Ralph Hanan said: “Notwithstanding the fact it is my role to introduce this bill, because that is my obligation as a Minister who is part of the Holyoake Government, my conscience will not let me vote for it.” What that man did was he introduced a bill and he voted against it.

I ask Jonathan Young where his conscience is. Mr Young knows absolutely that this bill and, in particular, the interventions in clause 4(2) are an area where the agreement, which is not even specified in the bill—so what we have in here is a bill that specifies an agreement and says that the interpretation should be based on the agreement. But is the agreement available in the legislation? No, it is not—no, it is not. National has not even bothered because it is trying to keep it all secret. It is trying to say in clause 4(2) that this Parliament should interpret the agreement as overriding the legislation, notwithstanding the fact that it is not prepared to put the entire agreement into the schedule of the bill.

National has cherry-picked it. It has picked up a clause here and a clause there that it wants to have highlighted, and it has made those in the schedule of the bill. But the important part of the agreement, signed by Steven Joyce and initiated over drinks by the Prime Minister, is not in the bill. I say to Jonathan Young shame on you.

💬 Jonathan Young: Website, Mallard.

Since when, in the history of the Parliament of New Zealand, have you been told that you go to a website—according to Jonathan Young—for something that overrides a letter of the legislation? For goodness’ sake! What sort of “Mickey Mouse” Parliament are we talking about? Chris Auchinvole’s head is hanging in shame at the interjection. I would ask Jonathan Young how many people he is prepared to have die as a result of this legislation. One? Ten? Fifteen? How many extra people are going to be murdered as a result of not paying their debt? How many more bodies in suitcases of people who could not pay their debt are going to be found in the Auckland harbour?

I move, That the question be now put.

The question is that the question be now put. Those of that opinion will say Aye, to the contrary, No. The Ayes have it. [Interruption] A party vote? [Interruption] No, we are not accepting personal votes on Part 1. In Part 2 there will be—

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I would like to refer you to McGee. Sorry, this is somewhat unanticipated, so I will have to go to the particular part. McGee makes it absolutely clear that gambling issues are areas where there is a traditional conscience vote. I do accept that it is the right of the Chair to decide when a personal vote occurs, but I ask you to examine the precedent that you are setting for something that is a gambling issue. I want to point out that in this bill—for example, looking at the purpose clause of the bill; the interpretation clause, especially clause 4(2); and clause 5 of the bill, which binds the Crown—every single one of those clauses involves extra gaming.

I thank the member for the points that he has brought up. There is an agreement from the Business Committee—I do not know whether the member is aware of it—that there will be personal votes allowed on Part 2. Here is the letter that has gone to all parties. It is dated 5 November. There is an agreement that says that Part 1 will be done by party vote and that Part 2 will be done by way of a personal vote on a conscience matter. That is the decision of the Speaker, that is the decision that I have ruled on, and we will now have a party vote, which has been called for.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Is this a new point of order? Because I have actually ruled on the previous point of order.

I have heard your ruling. Are you ruling that the Business Committee agreement can strip from a member their right to have a personal vote? Can you show me the Standing Order that allows that?

I am referring to Standing Order 139: “Where the Speaker considers that the subject of a vote is to be treated as a conscience issue, the Speaker will permit a personal vote to be held instead of a party vote.” The issues about conscience matters are in Part 2; they are not in Part 1. So the points that have been made—and I refer the member to the decision of the Business Committee and the Speaker’s letter to the parties, which I am upholding, and so on that basis I have ruled. I am not going to entertain it further, Mr Mallard, because I have ruled. I have ruled on what the Speaker has determined. Mr Speaker has determined that it is an agreement of all parties on the Business Committee, and it is not for me to actually deviate from that. At the end of the day—[Interruption] No, hang on. At the end of the day it is at my discretion. I have ruled that Part 1 is to be done on party vote, as per the Speaker’s instructions, and that Part 2 is to be done by way of a personal vote on conscience matters.

I move, That the Speaker be recalled in order to contest the ruling you have just made.

Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

Speaker Recalled