It started early in 2009 when Prime Minister John Key, wearing his Tourism Minister hat, joined with the old Auckland City Council in a feasibility study on a convention centre. Four Auckland sites were picked out, including one next to SkyCity in Hobson St.
In November that year, five organisations including SkyCity put their hands up when the Ministry of Economic Development called for expressions of interest.
Submissions had to be in by mid-June 2010. Three months later, the first of Christchurch's earthquakes struck. A year later, when the SkyCity bid was declared the winner, it was the only contender left standing.
It was the only proposal that didn't want large dollops of government backing at a time when any spare cash was pointing Christchurch's way. Instead of cash, SkyCity wanted kind - new poker machines, an extended gaming licence, that sort of thing. The haggling went on until the middle of this year, when the Auditor-General opened a probe into the backroom negotiations. A draft of this report is now with the casino company and the Government.
What I've never fathomed is that if a national convention centre is the vital piece of missing infrastructure to guarantee our future prosperity that Auckland Council, central government and the various business sector leaders claim it is, then why are they shackling this veritable money fountain to the whims of a gambling empire?
Just a few weeks ago, in these pages, Auckland Chamber of Commerce boss Michael Barnett was thundering on about how "in the 10 years Auckland has talked of building a national convention centre able to compete with Australian and Asian ventures we have lost, conservatively, $5 billion and thousands of new city and New Zealand-wide jobs to our economy".
Not to mention "the many other downstream benefits such as the boost to tourism, fostering commercial links and supporting innovation and knowledge transfer", Mr Barnett said.
To me, there's always been a certain cargo-cultism in such talk - a weird faith that such a building would miraculously cure our ailing economy. But you'd think true believers, like Mr Barnett, his chamber of business whizz kids and Prime Minister Key wouldn't be fumbling around, caps in hand, for start-up funding from a gaming boss.
If Mr Barnett claims Auckland has already lost $5 billion by not getting this temple to our prosperity erected 10 years ago, well more shame on him and his capitalist fellow travellers. Life under Nanny State must have softened their predatory instincts. A sniff of a $5 billion return over 10 years for a $350 million investment should have had them salivating to be in for the kill.
Unfortunately, Mr Barnett doesn't say whether he includes in his grand total the $42 million a year SkyCity plans to make from the 500 extra pokies and other concessions it's seeking from the Government. Much of this money will be extracted from super-rich VIP gamblers from communist China, and from Auckland's struggling proletariat, who will be hoping against common sense that their luck might change.
This is the red ink side of the equation that convention centre proponents try to avoid: the army of problem gamblers which will inevitably expand in proportion to the growth of SkyCity's monopoly enterprise.
They're the collateral damage Auckland will have to live with if we continue to tie the convention centre to the casino.
