Tremain Chris: Communications Legislation Bill — In Committee 
Tremain Chris: Communications Legislation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:6028] 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Communications Legislation Bill. Members of the public who are listening will be aware that it has probably been a couple of weeks since we have spoken in the Committee stage of this bill. As a quick reminder of where we have got to I point out that the Communications Legislation Bill is an omnibus bill that attends to both the Telecommunications Act 2001 and the Radiocommunications Act 1989. Listeners may recall if they were listening to the debate on this earth-shattering legislation that in Part 1 we dealt with the Telecommunications Act. Right now we are looking at the Radiocommunications Act 1989 and some amendments to that Act. 
As Minister Cunliffe said in the first reading the bill is aimed at maintaining a commercial environment of certainty and confidence for both telecommunications services and use of the radio frequency spectrum. So from that point of view the National Party certainly supports that and is behind the bill in that regard. 
Both parts of the bill are narrow in scope. That is demonstrated in Part 1 by there being only one substantive clause which amends the Telecommunications Act. The wider bill is not related to the decisions of the broader telecommunications legislation that is currently before the Finance and Expenditure Committee so members of the public should not be confused by that. That bill is proceeding. At the Finance and Expenditure Committee we are dealing with the local loop unbundling and we should be reporting to the House on that particular bill in I believe early December. 
In terms of Part 2 there are two key things on which we need to focus. One matter that my colleague Pansy Wong discussed earlier is the issue of inappropriate receivers. If we look at the purpose of the bill set out in Part 2 we see that it deals first with inappropriate receivers. Clause 6 states: “The purpose of this Part is to … (a) provide that radio engineers and others considering questions of interference and technical compatibility should not have regard to the reception of radio waves by inappropriate receivers:”. To many people that might sound like a heck of a lot of gobbledygook so I will attempt to explain exactly what we are talking about here because it is somewhat confusing. In fact it all comes down to property rights and whether people who own parts of spectrum are receiving their property rights. CanWest took a court case back in 2004 in Christchurch. The case was between two radio stations More FM at 92.1FM and Niu FM at 104.1FM. CanWest the owner of More FM took legal action against Niu FM for infringement of its property rights because it believed that there was significant interference being emitted on its signal and it was being confused with the Niu FM signal. As a result of that the two signals were combining in the same radio frequency and therefore More FM believed that it was losing a property right. 
Part 2 of this legislation aims to overcome that. It states that irrespective of that particular situation it will not change the actual law. It comes down to the actual receivers in cars. The situation that has arisen with Japanese cars is that in Japan the frequency on which FM stations are received is between about 76 and 90 megahertz whereas in New Zealand we receive it on the frequency between 87 and 108 megahertz. Since Japan uses a different spectrum band for radio broadcasting—as I have said 76 to 90 megahertz—the radios that turn up in New Zealand in imported cars are incapable of reception above 90 megahertz. So for instance we were talking 92.1FM which was above that level so it became a problem. It also includes the majority of New Zealand stations which are in the higher band spectrum. If we think about our own FM stations—in Hawke’s Bay for instance we have 92FM— 
Craig Foss 
: Hauraki. 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
:—and Radio Hauraki which Mr Foss listens to—they tend to be at the higher end of the spectrum. When Japanese cars come over here with their bands at between 76 and 90 megahertz in order to pick up 92FM in Hawke’s Bay people need to do one of two things. Firstly they can put in a new radio.