Cup bases — the real story
There’s nothing worse — and nothing more normal — than politicians taking the credit for something they didn’t really do, like the 36th America’s Cup bases solution.
Here’s what really happened with the agreement David Parker, Minister for Business, Innovation and Enterprise, has subtly positioned as his own, in Parliament anyway.
First, after six months of being excruciatingly stuffed around, Emirates Team New Zealand were just days away from crying quits and taking the 2021 Cup to Italy. You probably won’t find ETNZ saying this publicly because (a) it seems churlish now the issue is over and (b) they want to draw a line under an episode which has done New Zealand a bit of harm or, at the very least, has been embarrassing.
Inability to decide on a base for an event which will focus a huge amount of attention on the country made us look like a tin-pot, third world democracy hog-tied by political correctness, pandering to lobby groups and property developers, unable to tie our own shoelaces.
We had the nous to wrestle the Cup from Larry Ellison’s and Oracle’s technological might but we couldn’t decide where to pour the concrete for the defence.
Parker’s ministry, MBIE, seemed to be in what my grandfather used to call a bugger’s muddle — a bog of indecision so entrenched that those in the middle of it can’t see a way to extricate themselves. Plan after plan washed up on ETNZ’s shores with this lobby group’s points taken on board but not that group’s; little old Team NZ seemed almost incidental at times.
America’s Cup fans were turning off in droves . . . endless arguments and self-interest about bases is not what stirs the blood. Some of the preferred plans were leaked to media without reference to Team NZ, a pretty low trick when it comes to bending public opinion.
The bureaucrats also slipped the leash on Michael Stiassny, an adviser to MBIE, as a kind of attack dog to help negotiate the hosting fee, now revealed as $40 million, to help event costs. The fee was paid but a core item of ETNZ’s campaign — a permanent base — was lost.
The minister’s preferred solution was, it is understood, blowing out by $20 million or so, not a comfortable message to take to the nation nor the Cabinet table.
So Team NZ, with chief operating officer Kevin Shoebridge apparently prominent, came up with the idea of using the Viaduct Events Centre as the Team NZ base — meaning no extension of Halsey St wharf and saving a bunch of money. Not Parker, not Stiassny, not Viaduct Harbour Holdings and their commercial selfinterest and not ginger group Stop Stealing Our Harbour.
No, the same innovative thinking which saw Team New Zealand win the Cup from Oracle Team USA rescued this situation, too, in spite of Parker leaping to his feet in Parliament to answer toady questions from a Labour backbencher with ringing endorsements of the triumph of officials — and not a dicky-bird about Team NZ.
The plan is understood to save about $35m in set-up costs, allows minimal encroachment into the harbour, saves political face and seems to cap overall expenditure (except the yet-to-be assessed costs of the early clearance of the polluted land at Wynyard Pt) at $215m.
There will still be those who launch into the “big boys’ toys” criticism of America’s Cup expenditure by taxpayers and ratepayers but it is far less than the $110m paid for hosting rights of the 2011 Rugby World Cup and the $250m for upgrading Eden Park, an exercise which compromised it as a cricket venue unless you are someone who likes seeing sixes hit every 10 seconds over short boundaries.
The $40m hosting fee compares with $23m from Government and Auckland Council for last year’s World Masters
Games and Bermuda paid US$80m for their short-lived America’s Cup experience, including a hosting fee of US$15m and US$25m sponsorship underwriting.
It is also clear Team NZ have lost what they sought most, behind winning a hosting and bases agreement with officialdom — a permanent home marking the 31 years they have been in existence since that first challenge in
1987.
Now, although they will be based in the
Viaduct
Events
Centre, they are victims of their own idea. They will have the VEC for two Cup cycles (so, maybe
6-7 years) but that’s it. They will have Government and council assistance for a fit-out and will pay a relatively cheap rent but will still be homeless at the end of it all.
Parker can also, fair enough, claim his intervention paved the way for the agreement but there will also be no Viaduct Basin springing from the America’s Cup this time; no consequence that will permanently benefit the Auckland/New Zealand public, not to mention tourism. Some will claim the clearance of “Tank Farm” as a legacy but it would have happened anyway in time. Instead, you can see a future where property developers are rubbing their hands at the prospect of building apartments, hotels and offices on land made more desirable by America’s Cup exposure.
Inability to decide on a base made us look like a tin-pot, third world democracy hog-tied by political correctness, pandering to lobby groups and property developers.