Clark David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3716. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): There has got to be some irony in the previous speaker Melissa Lee getting up and decrying the Government’s broadband system. It has spent nearly $300 million and the member opposite who is a Government member is saying that it is appalling and she is right—she is right. That is the kind of confession from a Government that is so out of touch it thinks it can tell New Zealanders it is spending $300 million of their money and deliver no result. That is what we have opposite. Honestly this is reaching a ridiculous standard. But Mr Speaker—I think with my voice cracking like that I am going to turn into “Mr Squeaker” myself—I do not want to speak about that; what I want to talk about is the contribution from the Hon Amy Adams the woman in charge of the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill.The Minister for Communications said in her speech introducing the bill and I will read it that “the industry will not need to put their prices up or explain to their customers why the bill is changing.” Those are words from the Minister’s mouth. Let me read them again: “the industry will not need to put their prices up or explain to their customers why the bill is changing.” Well we have learnt during the debate that the big provider Spark is going to put up its bills and it is going to do it in a transparent way so that people know how much extra the Government is charging for this broadband service. It is going to put up its levies. It is saying: “Now that the Government has confirmed the levy will continue rather than reduce as originally legislated for it has put upward pressure on future costs and we will have to pass that cost through to our broadband and on-account mobile customers. We are exploring options for adding this cost in a transparent way to our customers’ monthly statements so they understand the contribution they are making to the Government’s Telecommunications Development Levy fund”. That cost is going to borne by every business broadband and mobile customer. That will be across all of the firms and that is because this Government is so determined to ram this through that it has not consulted on the legislation. It is just going to impose a new tax on all New Zealanders who are interested in using these kinds of internet services.That is what this Government does because it is so out of touch. It is breaking its promises. It had those promises that of course we remember: that this Government would return to a surplus. That was its big promise—its central promise in the last election campaign. Well we found out yesterday. We were told to wait—we were told to wait for the surprise. Well the surprise was no surprise. For the seventh time in a row this Government has failed to deliver a surplus. It keeps promising it. It keeps promising it—always jam tomorrow. The wage rises—the Government has broken that promise. It said that it would deliver an average increase of $7000 by 2016; now it is saying that increase will not be delivered until 2019. It is leaving it to the next Government to deliver the wage increase. This is a Government that cannot keep its word any longer. It did it with the GST increase. If we think back John Key said there would be no increase in GST and then lo and behold once he was elected up it went to 15 percent. That was at the same time of course that the Government delivered those tax cuts to the wealthiest New Zealanders.Well middle New Zealand is struggling every day going out to work trying to pay the bills but getting behind because this Government does not have its concerns at heart; it has at heart only the interests of the 1 percent. They are the very very elite; those who have the capital from a previous generation. They are all it is interested in serving. It is not interested in the people who go out every day and work hard to try to get ahead to try to look out for their families. On this side of the House we are—on this side of the House we are—and we are upset that the Government has broken its promises because it was elected on those promises. It was elected on the promise of a surplus. It was elected on the promise of increasing wages. Now it is not delivering. It said it would introduce no new taxes—we have had three in this Budget. We have had three in this Budget.I will read again from the departmental disclosure statement that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment put out and that the Minister will have seen. It asks whether there are in this bill any charges in the nature of a tax. In section 4.2 it asks: “Does this Bill create or amend a power to impose a fee levy or charge in the nature of a tax?” and in big bold capitals it says next to that “Yes”. Yes this is in the nature of a tax. Now we hear that the telecommunications providers are going to pass it on to their consumers. That makes a lie of what the Minister said. The Minister said “the industry will not need to put their prices up or explain to their customers why the bill is changing.” This is a Government that is so out of touch it thinks it can introduce a new tax after saying it would not. It thinks that it can say that surplus is its central promise and then not deliver on it. It thinks it can say wages will go up for hard-working New Zealanders and then not deliver. And we learnt yesterday of course that Working for Families is going to go down for many families in middle New Zealand. They are going to be further further behind. Sure it is really good that beneficiaries are getting a little bit extra but it should not be the case that that little bit extra is taken out of the pockets of those who are just a couple of rungs further up the ladder. That is not fair. New Zealanders know that is not fair. They know that these promises are promises that have been broken. This is a Government that can no longer be trusted to keep its word. This is an appalling appalling state of affairs and New Zealanders will be rightly upset about it.We know of course that InternetNZ has called for a review. Its representatives came to the Commerce Committee yesterday and they said it would be really helpful if the Government or the select committee or anybody—actually—would take a lead on investigating what has happened with the Rural Broadband Initiative part 1. That is what they said. They said that some leadership would be great. Let us see whether it worked or not. Let us see when you spend $300 million as a Government whether there is any effect. The Government is not interested. It is not interested. It does not want to be held to account any more. It can spend hundreds of millions. It does not need to account to the taxpayers or the voters—that is how out of touch it is. That is how far removed from the truth it is. That Government over there will reap the public displeasure as the public see their bills go up for this Rural Broadband Initiative while many of them cannot access it.The other thing I want to say is that I recently read that Ashburton has one of the best rural broadband connections in the country. I have been to Ashburton. Its connection is not that good. If that is the best that this Government can deliver it is appalling. New Zealanders deserve better than that. Now the Government is throwing more money at it but it is not going to test whether it is actually getting to where it needs to get to. My colleague Clare Curran has calculated that for every connection that has been made so far it is around $7000 that the Government has forked out. Are New Zealanders feeling better off for that $7000? Well they are actually going to be charged extra on top of that—about another buck a month for every kind of connection whether they have got a business connection or a personal connection. That is what they are facing now because new taxes are being introduced by this Government. It is a Government that is out of ideas that is breaking its own promises and it does not have a plan.The Government has not articulated how it is going to increase exports. It has promised an increase to 40 percent of GDP. Well actually under its watch exports are going backwards. They used to be 30 percent. They are going backwards. Treasury predicts that they will go backwards further—that next year exports as a percentage of GDP will drop further. Exports are becoming a smaller portion of the economy under this Government. It is no wonder that fewer small businesses are starting under this Government. It is a Government without ideas. It is determined to carry on with the commodity price cycles. It thinks that is the only answer. Well it is not. We need vision. We need aspiration. We need a Government that will keep its word. We need a Government that will be keeping its word and will actually deliver on the promises it makes. This Government seems determined not to do that.This Government is so out of touch it thinks it does not even need to answer to New Zealanders. It thinks it can introduce a tax and then say it is not its problem. It thinks it can reduce Working for Families for hard-working Kiwi families and say it is not its problem. This is a Government that is out of touch and out of ideas.It has also brushed off we learnt a housing idea from the Labour Government but it has not done the research. We saw in the Budget documents that there is $52 million in a capital contingency fund. When I worked at Treasury the things that went in the contingency fund were things that had not been thought through yet that could not be quantified from a Government that had not done its work. The Government was responding to the polling at the last minute. It set up a contingency fund and said: “We will do something about housing. We’ve got to do something—the polls are telling us it’s a real issue.” Six years on having done nothing the Government has put a little bit of money to one side. It is going to be a long time before that solution gets implemented. This Government is out of ideas. It has got no long-term plan. It is a Government that is breaking promises left right and centre and it will be held to account.