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Significant window of opportunity could be opening for New Zealand

and whether it will close for up to three years in its entirety whilst the rebuild is occurring or whether there will be a staged development over six years or longer with a partial closure. Whichever option the NSW Cabinet chooses, the removal or partial removal of a key convention facility in Australasia provides a unique opportunity for other convention centres in Australia and certainly in New Zealand.

This brings the decision for the proposed international convention centre to be located in Auckland in to even sharper focus as the closure or partial closure of the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre will have a significant impact on the region in terms of displaced business. I'm sure other Australian centres are licking their lips at the prospect of Sydney being essentially off-line for up to six years, and Melbourne of is course, beautifully positioned to take advantage of this occurrence as it has already completed a major expansion of its facilities including a new convention centre and hotel. My sources in Australia tell me that the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre may also be closed for a number of years for expansion purposes and this would only add to the window of opportunity, although it would seem entirely illogical if this was to occur during the proposed Sydney expansion. The main point of all this is to reiterate once more that Sydney would not be expanding its facilities if it did not have a magnificent business case to do so and was bulging at the seams in terms of its business, and the Gold Coast would not even remotely be considering doing a similar exercise if it wasn't for the same reasons.

We have all been very patient regarding the decision around the new international convention centre but these new developments in Australia must add urgency to the debate and also must influence the Government with its decision-making. I realise that there are some significant issues around problem gambling in New Zealand and the recent incident at SkyCity Casino where five children were left in a van while their parents "went off to play the pokies" brings this issue into sharp focus. However, as I have said on several occasions, gambling is a legal activity in New Zealand and is available in many outlets apart from the SkyCity Casino precinct. There will always be those who unfortunately will not be able to manage their impulses, and of course, help should be given to these people by way of specialist treatment and I do believe that SkyCity Casino is a good corporate citizen in this regard. I honestly believe that the time for talking is almost over now and the Government must make a decision and enter into a meaningful agreement with SkyCity to enable the company to build the international convention centre. New Zealand desperately needs to increase its export earnings from all sources including the convention industry and it is sheer folly to hold up a project that will significantly increase New Zealand's foreign exchange earnings from international conventions being held in New Zealand.

In the same vein I am finding it somewhat difficult to get any meaningful information out of Christchurch as to when the CBD rebuild will occur and hopefully this CBD rebuild will also include a convention centre of significant scale. Whilst at AIME in Melbourne recently, I was asked repeatedly by Australian meeting planners what was happening with the international convention centre in Auckland and what was happening with Christchurch in terms of a convention centre development. I realise that there are some significant hurdles and challenges to be overcome with the Christchurch CBD rebuild but I can't help but think that now the problems are of a political nature rather than of a natural kind. It is a well known fact that there is some significant friction between the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and the Christchurch City Council and it is to be hoped that these two organisations can play a lead role in the CBD development which of course will "hopefully include a convention centre" and certainly a rebuild of the CBD hotels that were either destroyed or had to be demolished following last year's earthquake.

The international convention market is a very lucrative market but is also demanding and because of the long lead times involved in the planning process in terms of choosing a destination in which to hold an international convention, it is imperative that the situation both in Auckland and Christchurch is clarified and communicated as soon as possible. Remember, many international conventions need at least five to seven years in the gestation period, and we really need to start marketing both Christchurch and Auckland right now bearing the lead times involved. This salient fact seems to escape many people involved in the process and I really think that both Auckland and Christchurch need to come to hopefully a positive decision regarding convention facilities in the very, very near future.

Rugby World Cup and Other Major Sporting Events

I was in a paddock recently on a friend's farm who specialises in breeding bulls for the beef market in both New Zealand and North America and as I looked across the fence into a paddock full of these bulls I couldn't help but notice the normal detritus that was lying in the paddock as a result of the bulls' natural activities ... bovine excrement! My mind then wandered to the claims of many owners of major sporting events who use a similar technique involving bovine excrement when pitching their event to various countries. I am by no means singling out the Rugby World Cup and the IRB as part of this scenario but it has got to be said that many of these major sporting bodies such as the IRB, the IOC and FIFA greatly exaggerate the benefits accruing to a host country when they put the hosting rights on the block for various countries to bid for. In the current global economic environment I think it is incumbent upon everybody to be a lot more sensible before embarking on major capital commitments, and due diligence into the return on investment, particularly around securing major events needs to be a lot more rigorous than it has in the past.

I wish to set the record straight that I am in no way against these major sporting events as they add variety, colour and excitement to our normal daily lives and that is a given. The area that I believe needs to be rigorously investigated is that of the commercial and financial returns to the host country not only in direct economic activity accruing as a result of hosting the event but also the media exposure element that is also touted as being so important. I just hope that someone in Central Government is currently doing a detailed unemotional and analytical analysis of exactly what benefits accrued to New Zealand in terms of financial reward and also what the actual costs were. We then should take this information and make it public so that future decision-making around bidding for these major sporting events can be done in a far more pragmatic and economically disciplined fashion. In terms of these major events, the effect on the convention industry is well established world-wide and the word "disastrous" tends to come into play. By way of example, convention arrivals particularly out of Australia, which is our key engine room market, for September and October were down by 47% and 32% respectively and cumulatively our international convention arrivals are currently running at around 10% less than the same time last year. The frustrating thing about the negative effect on the convention sector is that it is actually not necessary and if a little more rigorous analysis took place around accommodation requirements around the various games involved in sporting events we could easily accommodate conventions and meetings in the mid-week windows that inevitably do occur between major weekend games. The practice of accommodation chains blocking out country-wide accommodation is detrimental to the convention industry. I have banged on about this before but two years before the World Cup took place the message went out particularly to the Australian market that New Zealand would be virtually full for the entire period of the Rugby World Cup from the North Cape to Bluff. Clearly, anyone with a shred of common sense knew that this was not to be the case. However, in many cases the policy persisted and would-be meeting planners were put off bringing their business to New Zealand and in fact could not even get quotes for accommodation and convention space. Given the lead times involved in meetings and conventions all we did was turn off the tap two years before the event and then lo and behold we found out that we had rooms to burn in between the major games but it was too late, and many accommodation operators dropped their pants in terms of the rates and New Zealand once again sold itself short and missed out on valuable export dollars that could have flowed in by way of international conventions, particularly from the all important Australian market. I loved the World Cup, I went to several games. I love the fact that the All Blacks won and I am not whinging. All I am saying once again is that we need to learn from these events in the same way that the Australians hopefully learned from the Sydney 2000 Olympics and be far more disciplined and unemotional in assessing the actual value of bidding for an international sporting event and also be more intellectually honest about the negative impacts that these events inevitably have on certain sectors including the convention sector.