John MacDonald: One stadium, one ticket price

Even though I live in Christchurch and pay rates in Christchurch, you’re not going to hear me saying that I should pay less to get into the new One NZ Stadium when it opens next year. But I bet there’ll be no shortage of Christchurch people thinking that’s a brilliant idea, but I don’t. It’s something that the council-owned company that will run the stadium says could happen. People who live in Christchurch city could pay less than people from anywhere else. The reason being —or the theory being— that those of us who live in the Christchurch city area have put money into the stadium through our rates and maybe that could or should be recognised by charging us Christchurch lot less for tickets. On average, every Christchurch city ratepayer pays $144 a year to go towards the cost of building the stadium. All up —at this stage— the cost to build it is $683 million, and it’s expected to be open by April next year. There’s already a precedent for locals paying less with the hot pools at New Brighton. Locals get cheapie deals there. And locals in Hurunui pay less to get into the hot pools in Hanmer Springs. But I don’t think we should go down that track with the stadium. One reason being that we will all benefit once the thing is up-and-running. The money coming into town will be brilliant, which is enough of a pay-off for me. The forecasts say it’ll put $21 million into the local economy every year. That’s enough of a return for my investment. I don’t want cheaper tickets, as well. What’s more, it would be extremely hypocritical of people who are anti-stadium and have been banging-on for years that it’s just a nice-to-have and their rates money shouldn’t be going into it, to put their hand out for cheaper tickets. The reason the levy for out-of-towners is being talked about is because it’s the promoters and the people behind the concerts and the sporting matches who set the ticket prices. So the stadium operator couldn’t give Christchurch people a discount because they don’t set the prices, but they could put an out-of-towner levy on tickets bought by people outside Christchurch city. Which would, effectively, mean Christchurch locals paying less and people elsewhere paying more. But I don’t think that would be fair. Because what about people living right on the doorstep of Christchurch city? How fair would it be to make people in Selwyn and Waimakariri, for example, pay more? It wouldn’t be fair at all. Because what we would be doing is punishing them because Christchurch City Council couldn’t get its act together on the stadium funding in the first place. It didn’t even bother —right at the outset— to try and negotiate a deal where those areas did have some skin in the game, where they did make some sort of financial contribution towards the stadium. It would also be punishing people in Selwyn and Waimakariri for their councils not being proactive. For not picking up the phone and calling Christchurch and saying they wanted to do some of the heavy lifting. Fifty percent of people in Selwyn travel into Christchurch every day for work and school. And I’ve said all along that people in Selwyn and people in Waimakariri should be contributing to the stadium through their rates. But that horse has bolted. The people who could have made that happen —the councils— didn’t. And so I’m not going to turn around now and say that us Christchurch locals should get preferential treatment.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.