Q + A April 22, 2012

Panel Discussions

Hosted by PAUL HOLMES

In response to STEVEN JOYCE interview

PAUL Time to welcome our panel. Dr Claire Robinson from Massey University. And with us this week, Jim Anderton, former deputy prime minister and former Progressive leader and a former Christchurch mayoral candidate in 2010. And with us also, former ACT MP and deputy leader of ACT, Heather Roy, now chair of pharmaceutical lobby group Medicines New Zealand. So I think the main thing we take from that is there's no deal done and we’re keeping the options open, Claire.

CLAIRE ROBINSON – Political Analyst
Yeah, I think that the government is obviously responding to some of the negative public opinion that’s been going on around this issue. But it’s going to go on for a long time. It’s something that is difficult. But I think that they’re pretty committed to this, and the convention centre itself seems to be a pretty good idea. The problem is around pokies. The pokie lobby seems to have increased the hysteria around it to the point where it’s become slightly... There's a whole lot of issues that are conflated around this discussion.

PAUL You like the idea of a convention centre, though, don’t you?

CLAIRE Oh yeah.

PAUL This is a huge industry around the world to tap into some of this. You’ve been to a big one of political scientists.

CLAIRE Yeah, well, I went to one last year in Seattle where there were 7000 delegates and, you know...

PAUL All on expenses and all spending in the shops.

CLAIRE They’re all paid for by their employers – all their airfares and accommodation – so they have extra money to be able to spend, and I think this is the point, this is why the government is pushing it, because there is a lot of money that can be spent. There are a lot of jobs around this industry. So, you know, the idea of the convention centre is great.

JIM ANDERTON – Former Progressive Leader
I’m certainly strongly in favourite of convention centres. We had one before the earthquake. We built it ourselves, actually.

PAUL In Christchurch?

JIM We didn’t do any deal with the casino or on pokie machines or anything else, and as far as I know, it actually paid for itself. I heard the comment that it couldn’t possibly pay for itself, but ours did.

PAUL It was small, Jim.

CLAIRE Yeah, these are big – 3500 delegates.

PAUL We’re talking major...

JIM OK, well, if it’s so good for New Zealand, if it’s so good for Auckland, let’s see the Aucklanders put up some money for it, and let’s see the government put up some money for it.

PAUL But the deal he’s proposing, the deal he’s talking about with Sky – Sky gets a little bit on its side, and we get convention centre paid for without any...

JIM And the people who pay for it are the poorest people who came here addicted to gambling. Actually, as we speak, Paul, the finance minister of South Australia has denied Sky exactly this deal. He said, “No, get lost.” And that makes me feel like I’m in a banana republic. One company can come along and do a deal on a change of the law.

PAUL Oh, come on. They have a long history of dedication to this country.

JIM Well, let’s do it industry by industry, not company by company. If we want a change for the film industry, we did it for the whole film industry. That incentivisation was done for the whole film industry, not just for one company. The idea that one company can ask you to change the law is ludicrous.

HEATHER ROY – Former ACT MP
I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Who’s to say that 7000 people are going to come here for a conference? We’re a long way from the rest of the world. Are people going to be prepared to pay for that? And the first question is do we need a convention centre, and I’m not sure that we know the answer to that yet. But assuming that we do, should the government pay for and run the convention centre? And John Key’s been absolutely clear about this – no, they shouldn’t, and I absolutely agree with that perspective. Then, of course, the pokie argument enters the foray, and my big concern with that is with the pub charities, 37% of the funding goes to charity; with the big casinos – the SkyCity casino – 2.5% goes. So are the charities going to be missing out on funding, and I think if we’re going to have the set number of pokies, as Auckland Council has already outlined, then we lose that.

PAUL That’s true, but we also have the downside, don’t we? I mean, are they insidious things, pokies?

CLAIRE Well, yes, they can be, just like anything can be insidious if people can’t control it. But let’s get a grip on this. The gaming industry in New Zealand is enormous. It’s a $2 billion industry and $15 billion turnover. I mean, there's an enormous amount of money that goes into this, and of that, a few extra hundred pokies is tiny. It’s a drop in the ocean, and, you know, we gamble from what’s called ‘safe gambling’ and Lotto through to the TAB. The biggest, by far, portion of the industry is the pokies in the clubs and the bars...

PAUL And it is reckoned, I think...

CLAIRE ...and in the casinos, it’s tiny.

PAUL But it’s reckoned that half of people who play pokies are gambling addicts.

JIM Well, that’s where the money comes from. Look, let’s get over it. SkyCity will pay nothing for this. The people who use the pokie machines will. SkyCity last year made $700 million in profit. If they’re so keen on a convention centre, a bigger one, they’ve got enough money to pay for it if they want to. Next thing we’ll have the tobacco industry being asked to fund one or the alcohol industry. Let’s get into it. You know, we can really... Make it the Mafia.

HEATHER The reality is that people...

PAUL (laughs) The Mafia!

JIM Well, why not? Anything can go here, evidently.

HEATHER The reality...

PAUL Before you come in, can I ask you a political thing about political life? Key was... This was building last week, and Key’s in Indonesia duking it up with this one and that one. What’s that like when you know you’ve got some bloody mischief brewing at home and you’re thousands of miles away?

JIM I think you saw what it’s like, because Mr Joyce is now saying, “Oh, it isn’t all over yet. We’re looking at it,” and so on. I think it was well and truly all over until this furore started.

PAUL They’ve come back and levelled it down quite quickly, haven’t they? Key on Close Up and John Campbell on Friday night, I think, and Steven Joyce today. Were they flat-footed on this? Did they not see the trouble coming politically?

HEATHER I don’t think they expected the reaction that they’ve got, and, look, people... When I talk about gambling, I always say, “Look, people hate the pokies, but they love the funding that comes a result of that that goes into the community.” And that’s something that does need to be considered. I think you can’t ignore that factor.

CLAIRE Yeah, and I think the government – they don’t anticipate. This is a government that doesn’t tend to anticipate the strength of the left wing or the anti-government lobbies. But once they work out that something has become a political issue, then they start wheeling out the big guns. This is what you’re seeing now.

PAUL Well, that’s right, and of course nothing... Really, no one spoke up. No one really went charging into the defence of the government in this particular deal. Key gets home and straight away you see the importance to them of John Key.

JIM Absolutely, and there's a certain amount of political capital that you can afford to expend in defending yourself against attacks like this, and Mr Key has been good at the one-offs and off the top of his head dealing with things. If these come one after the other, which we’re starting to see now, and he does it all off the top of his head and they rely on him entirely, he’s going to lose that political capital very quickly.

PAUL So what are the chances of getting that convention centre with the pokies deal?

CLAIRE Oh, that’s going to still take quite a long time for this negotiation to happen, so I can’t see it happening overnight.

*

In response to GERRY BROWNLEE interview

PAUL Stalled. I only say what they tell me to.

JIM Well, look, let me say two or three quick things. A stadium was built in three months holding 25,000 people.

PAUL This is AMI.

JIM The new Christchurch stadium.

PAUL Oh, yes, yes, yes.

JIM And, look, people would say sport’s not all that important. Well, if you lived in Canterbury and you watched the Crusaders last night, you’d know how important it is. So morale was lifted. The business community have been terrifically resilient. I mean, they’ve moved out all over the place and re-set themselves up and the Christchurch economy is actually growing. I mean, it’s a miracle, really. The real problem, I think... And I have some sympathy for Gerry Brownlee. I mean, if he builds them too fast, it’s too fast; if he doesn’t build them fast enough, it’s not fast enough. So I have some sympathy. The real problem is that, I think, people had their expectations raised too high. You know, John Key said no one in Christchurch should be worse off. Well, you know, yeah, right. Everyone’s worse off, and it’s going to take much longer than the few months or whatever was said. So we have to have on the table the real truth – this is going to take... I would think no one of my age is going to see the end of it.

PAUL No, it’s a massive disaster.

JIM It is a massive disaster.

PAUL And there's a tendency to forget that, I think, but nevertheless, if it hadn’t – to use the hateful word – stalled, why set up this new 100-day outfit? They try and set up a new magical outfit that’ll...

JIM Let me give you one reason.

PAUL ...elucidate a vision.

JIM Let me give you one reason from Christchurch – the inner-city of Christchurch was dying before the earthquake. The Christchurch City Council couldn’t organise a bun-fight in a bakery at that point. And now, with all this trouble, the government has stood back for a while, and I don’t blame them. They’re going to be paying up a lot of money for this, and they want to have a hand on it. And I don’t blame them for that.

PAUL Well, Mr Brownlee’s obviously fed up, too, to set this up. But then again, you’ve got some sympathy for the council, Heather Roy?

HEATHER Well, I think there's two things that Christchurch needs. It needs vision, and it needs investment, and those two things need to happen in conjunction with each other, so I think Gerry Brownlee’s done absolutely the right thing in putting this group together, because I think they’ve got the potential to be visionary. If you look at Santa Cruz in 1989, they set up a gang of 36. There were 18 nominations from local government and 18 nominations from the business community, and they had absolutely no power, but they were an influential group, because they had the right people there looking at the problem.

PAUL Greg Boyed made a good point, though – so after 100 days, we get the vision. And then what do we get? Where is the power of this group to actually kick anyone up the backside?

HEATHER They don’t necessarily need power. That was my point. I think they need to be influential. And, look, if they investment is going to flow beyond a vision, you need to have everybody working together, so central government, local government, the community, including the business community, all need to be working together. If there’s tension and conflict seen there, then that investment won’t flow, and that’s what Christchurch desperately needs. And I think this group has actually got a role to play. CERA’s getting bogged down. The local council’s getting bogged down. But, look, the local council wasn’t elected to rebuild Christchurch. It’s been elected, like every other council in the country, to govern Christchurch. It’s too big a job for them alone, and so these other components need to come in.

PAUL Righto, Claire, just quickly, the perception in the north – in the North Island – I think is that no one seems to be able to advance things.

CLAIRE No, but also the perception in the north is that nobody actually knows what to do, so I think that people in the North Island think, “Oh my God, this is such an enormous task. We’re pretty helpless, beyond the initial giving of money.”

PAUL There are a million little things that have got to be done. I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?

*

In response to JON HUNSTMAN interview

PAUL Claire Robinson, Romney versus Obama – who wins?

CLAIRE Well, at the moment, it’s still looking like it’s going to be Obama. He’s winning the public-opinion polls. He’s got a lot more money –Obama’s earned $350 million to Romney’s $87 million to this point, in terms of campaign funding. Obama has the benefit of incumbency and history – not many presidents get voted out after their first term of office. And I don’t think the Republican Party is entirely all behind Mitt Romney.

PAUL Republican Party. Yes, Mr Anderton?

JIM It is, and the primaries have done a lot of harm, and four years in office does a lot for the presence and the image of a president.

PAUL And, of course, on the campaign trail, with his communication skills, he’ll be exceptional.

JIM He’s going to be great.

PAUL What do you think, Heather?

HEATHER I think Obama will probably will, I think the Republicans are in trouble, and I think Jon Hunstman is a very impressive politician. He described himself in that Harvard speech as a failed politician. He might be a failed presidential candidate, but he’s very impressive, led their Doha round, and I think we haven’t seen the end of him.

PAUL No, no. Let’s hope not. He’s only 50 years old.

JIM I’d like to know what he means by cleaning up the Middle East.

(laughter)

JIM The devil is in the detail.

PAUL That’s right. But it’s amazing, isn’t it, the numbers? Poor old Jon Hunstman had to – from own money – lend his campaign $1.5 million. I mean, it’s a pathetic number compared to the amount that Obama’s raised and Romney.

CLAIRE It’s a bizarre system where they have to raise the money.

PAUL No money, no candidacy.

CLAIRE And they have to spend so much money of advertising. Now, that’s very interesting now because of course television advertising is still the main form of political communication for the Americans. But it’s just ridiculously expensive.

JIM And then they have to do deals with the business community, dare we say it.

PAUL Like that wicked SkyCity crowd.