Is John Key a bare-faced liar?
This morning on TV3, the Prime Minister faced the camera and had great glee in claiming that when Helen Clark was in power, Labour did "exactly the same deal" as National is doing with Sky City now. A convention centre in exchange for allowing more pokies.
He's hoping that's all the dumb and redneck voters remember -that punch line. Except it's bull.
In 2001, the sinking lid policy on gaming machines (that Labour introduced in 2003)hadn't been set up. The deal back then was a $37mill convention centre, in exchange for 230 pokies and 12 gaming tables. The new convention centre is on a different scale, $350mill, in exchange for up to five hundred gaming machines at the casino, in defiance of the sinking lid policy.
And the earlier decision was not made by the Labour government at all, but by the Casino Control Authority. Guess who ran that back then? Judith Collins (National, now Justice Minister) was the chair.
More rubbish from John Key about the number of gaming machines being lower now, than in 2002. Yes, of course, Labour's sinking lid policy did that. By 2008 when National got in, the bulk of the good work had already been done. How dare John Key and National take the credit for it. Every dollar that disappears from a local community into gaming machines doesn't get spent in the nearby businesses. 1/3 of it goes to govt, 1/3 to fat cat trusts or bars, and 1/3 to community grants. (Except for the casinos, they hardly pay anything back to local community causes).
A gaming machine is budgeted to take at least $1,000 clear a week. 500 machines would reap $26mill a year. Sky City's tender for the building was the worst deal of five offers, and it was accepted.