Sailgp Auckland Funding

All right, now, I've tried very hard to understand the government decision to essentially cancel sale GP in Auckland for next year, and I just can't. I cannot understand what has gone on here, because it sounds to me like this has come down to a few hundred thousand dollars. Now, what happened? I'm just going to run you through the timeline. What happened is that, remember, we've been fighting for sale GP to stay in New Zealand, and particularly in Auckland, for the last few years. So then October last year, the government and Auckland Council agreed to pay five million dollars combined. mind for sale GP to be held in Auckland. That was in October. Then in February, there was a request from sale GP for more money, which would have come out of the major events fund. And that, that request in February appears to be what has triggered Louise Upston to say no. Now finding out how much that request was for was incredibly difficult today. No one wanted to tell me the number. Eventually I was told it was less than a million dollars and might have been closer to $500,000. Now if that is true. Then turning down sale GP because of $500,000 is nutty because that is peanuts for a government and money that would almost certainly have made more money. I would say that was a wise investment because sale GP is not just about what people spend in Auckland when they come here for it. It's also about just like with the America's Cup, what everyone around the world watching the event sees. They see Auckland's beautiful harbour on a stunning day. They see crowds having fun. They see beautiful buildings, beautiful maunga. You cannot pay for that kind of international exposure. We have blown tens of millions of dollars on the America's Cup over the years. We paid for Lincoln Park, for God's sake, to come to Auckland. We set aside $70 million for major events just like this one, and yet we turned down this one, one of the hottest sailing events, over $500,000. Now, just on a political level, this makes no sense to me because Auckland has been desperate and has been begging the government for help with events like this to revive the city. We've just got that underway and then this happens in election year in a city that needs to be won to win the election and this is a city that is already showing signs of starting to lean left. Now I'm open to arguments to the contrary but this just seems like a really bad decision to me.