Q+A interview with Murray McCully.

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be watched on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

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MURRAY MCCULLY interviewed by GUYON ESPINER

GUYON Thank you, minister, for joining us. We really appreciate that. A big, big day and a big night for New Zealand . Are we ready to cope with the influx of people similar to what we saw on opening night, I presume?

MURRAY MCCULLY – Rugby World Cup Minister
Yeah, look, I think we are going to have a big night, and if we have a good outcome in the game, a very big night and a long one. It’s going to test the facilities and the infrastructure a little bit, but I think, as we saw on opening night, while there were some challenges there, people were in a good space, good-humoured. I talked to the police about this, and I hope that tonight, if it does go on a bit, that people remember that we’re having a celebration of rugby and a celebration of New Zealand .

GUYON Because we could get a similar number – 200,000 people – in downtown Auckland , couldn’t we? Are we going to be able to cope with that?

MR MCCULLY Well, the numbers I’ve seen have been around 130,000 to 150,000 on opening night, and I think we could well see a replication of that, and the short answer is, yes, we’ve got a lot more measures in place there. We’ve got more Fan Zone space for tonight. We’ll be opening up the Marsden Wharf as well as Captain Cook and as well as Queens , more space down the Quay St area. The City Council, of course, has got a Fan Zone at Aotea Square as well as the one they’ve opened up recently in Wynyard. There's quite a lot more space, quite a lot more facilities and amenities there, more crowd control. But again, we are going to be asking people to cooperate, because there’ll be a lot of people there that could put pressure on our systems.

GUYON Any advice in terms of transport for people tonight?

MR MCCULLY I think the advice is to just make sure you leave in plenty of time if you’re going to games. If you’re going to town, make sure that you’ve got plenty of time to get there and remember it’s going to be a big night and we just need to give each other a bit of space and remember our courtesy for our visitors.

GUYON Alright, in terms of the economic impact, the ticket sales have been very high, but you were expecting something like $700 million from people coming to visit. Are those economic gains actually going to be realised, do you think?

MR MCCULLY Oh, I’m sure they are, and if you see the statistics that were released for the month of September, we’d had 80,000 visitors by the end of September. We were projecting 100,000 by the end of the tournament, so I think we’re ahead on points there. All of the spend indicators are that we’re seeing the dollars flow into the tills now. But the most important thing is that we’ve got to take a long-term view here. We’re a small country down the bottom of the Pacific. We sell $55 billion worth of goods and services every year to over 170 countries. And this is a chance for us to do something that is long-term in value for New Zealand – brand ourselves, present ourselves in a way that’s going to make us appear good business partners, and that’s the long-term value of this tournament.

GUYON And that makes sense, and that’s an argument you hear, but what are some of the actual tangible results of that? I mean, what would that lead to?

MR MCCULLY Well, it’s going to lead to more people being involved in more business activities offshore. We need to... If we’re going to grow our foreign exchange sector from about 30% of our GDP to 40%, we have to have more sectors involved in exporting, we have to have more businesses involved on an international scale, and that’s something that’s been one of the unheralded successes of the tournament – the Business Club with over 9000, split half between people here and people abroad, and I’ve seen them day after day doing their functions, having their meetings. A lot of people coming through doing some quite big business deals, and making long-term relationships, and that’s the business this country’s got to be in.

GUYON So we’ve had this economic success and this flow-on from the tournament. It must be hard for people to understand why it is that we’re going to lose $40 million from hosting the tournament. Why is that?

MR MCCULLY Well, it’s because the way the tournament is structured, all of the revenue flows, apart from the ticket sales, flow to the organisers – to the IRB. The only flow of income to the joint venture company between the union and the government is from ticket sales. I think $268.5 million was a huge target – 11 times the Lions tour in 2005 – and I think that Martin Sneddon and Therese Walsh and people at RNZ 2011 have done a tremendous job getting that budget met.

GUYON Tell me how this is split up. It’s $39 million, I think isn’t it?

MR MCCULLY Yeah.

GUYON $26 million from the government and it was going to be a $13 million loss for the NZRU. Have you changed your mind at all about how that’s split up?

MR MCCULLY Well, the deal was always two-thirds to the government, one-third of the loss to the rugby union. Of course, when the project loss a couple of years ago went up to $39 million, that did mean that the rugby union’s share would go up to $13 million, but the Prime Minister has said quite recently that we’d cap the rugby union at a $10 million exposure, and I think that’s appropriate, given the benefits that the tour’s brought to the country.

GUYON So the taxpayer would pick up the rest of that?

MR MCCULLY That’s correct.

GUYON Yeah, OK. In terms of the IRB, there have been some quite controversial calls from them – just hard-line commercial stuff. We saw the Samoan team fined for wearing the wrong mouth guard. Have they been a bit over the top?

MR MCCULLY Look, I think after any undertaking of this size, you sit down afterwards and look for the lessons learned. I know the IRB will do that, and so will everyone else. We certainly will, from central government’s point of view. And I think that’s the time to talk about these things, rather that on the eve of the big finale.

GUYON In terms of the Pacific nations as well, I mean, we’ve used this term “rugby diplomacy” in terms of... I guess you’re doing, as foreign minister, what the business people are doing as business people – making contacts – and there's that sort of diplomatic side of it. Have they walked away with a bit of a sour taste in terms of having that very short turnaround time in games and perhaps not proper representation on the governing bodies?

MR MCCULLY Look, we’ve gone out of our way to make sure that that Pacific nations get their own share of the hosting of this tournament. That’s why we hosted the Pacific Island Leaders Meeting here in the week before the opening match of the World Cup, and I think it’s one of the reasons that Martin and his team decided that Tonga would be the opening game with New Zealand . And we’ve gone out of our way to make sure that the Pacific nations really have their piece of this tournament, and the...

GUYON Do you think they feel like that, though?

MR MCCULLY Well, look, the issues that have been around for a long time that they have with the IRB, and frankly New Zealand’s a strong supporter of their interests at the IRB. The government is, the New Zealand Rugby Union is, and we’re not going to change that.

GUYON So are you going to be advocating their position?

MR MCCULLY Yes, unashamedly. Look, I would like to see a better deal for the Pacific nations, and after this tournament is over and when the debrief happens, I hope that’s one of the things we’ll get a chance to talk about, but I’d rather do that after the tournament.

GUYON Will there be another tournament? I mean, I think you’d said earlier that this was it – this is the last time that we’d have a crack at it. Have you changed your view?

MR MCCULLY Well, I have, actually. I’ve been tremendously impressed with the way that New Zealanders have actually gone out of their way to embrace our visitors – not just the big teams, which everyone thought we’d be embracing, but the smaller teams that we never picked to win here. They’ve had a fabulous tournament. They’ve rewarded us by playing fantastic rugby. It’s made it a real festival of rugby everywhere around the country. And I think that what New Zealanders have really done here is put their hands up and say, “Hey, we’re up for hosting this sort of tournament again.” And we’ve shown why, while we don’t have the glitz and glamour of London or Paris , we have something special, and for rugby folk, this is a great place to have a tournament like this.

GUYON Just finally, as we compete with the lawnmowers, are you nervous about tonight? There's a lot riding...

MR MCCULLY Yeah, of course I am. Of course I am, and I think... This is the thing – I think that New Zealanders sense this is going to be a pretty tough sort of contest. The French have done it to us a couple of times, and in the same way the All Blacks are showing some respect for a fearsome opponent, I think New Zealanders are as well.

GUYON Alright, we’d better leave it there, but thank you very much for joining us, Rugby World Cup minister Murray McCully.