McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): It gives me pleasure following the previous speaker Shane Jones and the two or three people who spoke before that who knew what they were talking about with respect to telecommunications. As a true resident of the provinces it's a pleasure to follow the previous speaker. I guess my concerns about telecommunications and the way we deal with it are not so much related to the speed at which we can regulate it to ensure that our economy is able to develop in the future but it's about the people that get left behind by the development of this kind of technology. One of the challenges that we have as a country because of the very nature of us our geography the people that live in it and interestingly the fact that the large majority of our income comes from parts of New Zealand that struggle the most with telecommunications with electricity provision and all those sort of things—so our challenge as a country whoever's in the Government is to actually get services to those regions where the productivity comes from. That's I guess one of the key reasons that we have to regulate both the telecommunications industry and the electricity industry because both of those are vital parts of the potential growth of our productive economy and they're certainly important to us in the future.The other interesting thing that has happened in New Zealand and I think it's because of our geography and because of our location in the world is that we have people moving to New Zealand with very interesting business models and they move to parts of New Zealand where we have great difficulty providing services but nonetheless they bring significant income to the country. They bring a whole lot of value to the country in the form of new technologies business and things like that. So they move here and they go to parts of New Zealand that are without question the most beautiful parts of the world actually but none the less places where we as service providers and as a Government struggle to get communications into that area. So the issues that I'm interested in with respect to this bill are particularly issues that cover those areas that struggle for services.We of course support this bill. I want to talk about one or two things within the bill that I think are interesting and probably debatable and one of them is the deregulation of the copper services. Obviously we've relied on them in all parts of New Zealand—morning Goldsmith. Nice to see you. We've certainly relied on copper for all of our services in rural New Zealand from the days when you used to—I think our phone number was 12D and it was sort of like two longs and three shorts. Now not many of you in this room with the exception perhaps of the previous speaker will remember that time but I most certainly do. Of course you could also pick up the phone and listen to your neighbour provided you knew who it was—you could pick up the phone and listen to what your neighbour was talking about. So really the protection of our privacy and all that sort of thing nowadays is nothing new because in those days you knew everyone down the line and who they were talking to and what they were talking about. None the less the world's changed for most people but it hasn't changed for some people in New Zealand and that's one of the challenges of the deregulation of the copper services and the threat that that to some extent provides. I realise that the bill goes to lengths to give the Commerce Commission the ability to review the provision of copper services and when they should be or when they're entitled I guess to no longer be provided. I live in one of those areas and have just moved and I still live in one of those areas and interestingly I can throw a stone and hit one of our major defence bases but none the less still don't have a fibre line to my house.So it's a massive problem for New Zealand and it will last for some time to come yet. Despite the effort as the previous speaker said of the previous Government and the significant resource that the likes of Steven Joyce and Amy Adams put into this on behalf of that Government this is going to be an ongoing process and I'm pleased to see this Government continuing to speed that process up as quickly as they can. Of course technology enables changes to happen very quickly and as with all large entities Governments lock themselves into contracts. We interestingly find ourselves locked into contracts nowadays not only in the telecommunications area but many others where the technology has gone right past those contracts and goes past them very quickly. So it's an area that I think is hugely complicated and it's an area of risk for us and it always will be. The other thing that this bill talks about is greater consumer protections and despite the very best efforts of our legislators and however we might go about that we are never going to get the perfect system of consumer protection. I think that it's all very well to have consumer protection in place and you can take an average of or a view of what that consumer protection might look like but you certainly can't get a broad scope of consumer protection that protects everyone equally.Another issue I was interested in talking about and I note that Clare Curran raised it earlier was the issue of vulnerable and older people. As we go to change all sorts of legislation—I notice the tax legislation just going through the Finance and Expenditure Committee today is dealing with changes to our tax department which are very clearly putting more emphasis on the use of technology and the way we deliver those services—for old people and the more vulnerable in our community it becomes a threat because some of us as I said earlier are used to the 12D phone line where you've got the long short long and suddenly we've got to use telecommunications to deal with our tax issues with our banking and with all sorts of things. As those organisations and indeed the Government move to provide more and more services online that becomes a greater threat.So the very careful regulation and regulatory framework that we operate under is hugely important to those people and certainly makes it more important that we're able to not only regulate and provide services to those people but the other challenge we've got with this stuff is making sure—and if we're a Government department we've got a significant challenge—that we provide the information and the ability for them to deal with those issues in a manner that is equitable for them. Interestingly the consumer survey on this kind of thing done not so long ago reported that 11 percent of our people have problems with both online services and with telecommunications services. It's all very well for us to say 11 percent of them but as I said earlier the 11 percent might be a very large part of our productive economy. So we can put things in percentages and it doesn't sound like it's many people or a very large part of our economy but it certainly is. So it's hugely important that we keep working to lift the responsiveness and services we provide for those people and make sure in the course of that that we do our very best to regulate the opportunity for those people to receive those services and to use them as part of their ongoing life.It's interesting that the Commerce Commission has got responsibility for understanding this bill for declaring which geographic areas are specified fibre areas—in other words where the copper lines can be either removed or run down. That will be a challenge in itself because as I said earlier I live in an area where fibre goes past my gateway but it doesn't go to my house and it's not accessible. So regulation is required to ensure that these things are accessible that people can get at them and that they work well for us.So I like the National Party support this bill. It's necessary. It won't be perfect because the scene we're living in changes so quickly. As I said earlier I guess my greatest fear in the whole of this process is that we continue to provide the very best services we can to that productive part of our economy and the isolated part of our economy that needs those services. But they most certainly also need the support of a regulatory framework and we've seen in the electricity industry that that is fraught and a very difficult thing to do. It's easy to regulate for the major centres of population but very difficult to regulate satisfactorily for our broader and more sparsely populated parts of New Zealand.So certainly we support this bill and I look forward to seeing how it operates and I'm pretty sure there'll be another amendment bill back in the House within a very short time. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.