Woolerton R Doug: Telecommunications Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Woolerton R Doug: Telecommunications Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:7135] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First likewise supports the Telecommunications Amendment Bill. I am pleased to say that we have total agreement in the House I think. I thank the chairman of the Commerce Committee the officials who guided us through a very very technical process and indeed the Minister David Cunliffe who as the previous two speakers have said allowed us to roam more widely than perhaps was the initial intent and the result is all the better for that. I also mention right up front the new chairman of Telecom Mr Wayne Boyd who grasped rather more quickly than others in his organisation might have that this was a serious matter that Telecom needed to engage in a very serious manner and that it is not purely commercial—there is a huge political component in Telecom given the fact that it alone has access to virtually every house in New Zealand. We as a Government and as a Parliament are demanding that it share that access with others for the benefit of competition—not to share it for free. Telecom in our view now has a chance to make a significant business out of the wholesale department—if we can call it that in simplistic terms—in charging others to access its lines and its technology in order to provide further services and speedier services to homes and businesses throughout New Zealand. 
 I just make a brief note here that we started with the task of unbundling the local loop and spoke about it rarely thereafter. We spoke about a whole lot of other things but in fact that was the object of the exercise and that is what has been achieved at the end of the day. I agree with Dr Lockwood Smith and the chairman Shane Jones that it is a price-sensitive business. It is a sensitive business with regard to the price that is charged for people to enter the loop and it is a sensitive business not only for the current investors but also for the future investors in Telecom. So it was important that all of the legislation pictured in the future be brought forward and put into this bill so that once and for all Telecom could have surety those people whom we want to invest in Telecom would know what they were dealing with we could have investment at a reasonable rate Telecom would not have to put a margin on for unnecessary risk and all those sorts of things. 
The Finance and Expenditure Committee also had to deal with the environment and it had two former Ministers involved in that process which was quite fortunate. One former Minister came from a National administration and one came from a Labour administration. It is good that we had those Ministers there because they both felt in their previous lifetimes as telecommunication Ministers that they had been hard done by by Telecom; in other words Telecom had taken the legislation and proceeded to go around it over it under it and in every other direction and had not lived up to what the Ministers thought were its responsibilities. 
Again I praise the present Minister by pointing out that it was his intent to ensure without going too far that that would not happen again and right through the select committee process there was that understanding. That is where the present chairman of Telecom understood that in order to atone if you like—and that is not quite the word—for sins of the past he had to push his company and his employees rather further than they might have gone on their own. I am sure he did that in consultation with the Minister I know there was consultation with the chairman and that is as it should be. We have a better bill because of all that discussion. 
As the chairman said there was some heartache or grief or aggravation around the fact that we had the chairman on his own in a so-called private session but I think it was that sort of approach to the process that produced some understanding and it was after that meeting that we were able to proceed—quite quickly in actual fact—to a resolution. 
The Minister and Telecom are required to work out all sorts of undertakings together so that the legislation will be completed today. But in fact this is just the start of a process that will now not necessarily go behind closed doors but will go from this Parliament to the Minister’s office to Telecom to the public and to users of these systems. I say that because when a matter goes off our table it is sometimes convenient for us to forget about it but the Minister and his team will really now just start to engage seriously with Telecom. It is through those undertakings and that process that we will have fair competition in this market and we will have the sorts of things that the Minister and the Government envisage for this country. 
We are a smart country. We need to do things in a smarter way than other people but we cannot do that if we do not have the smartest technology to work with and indeed the ability to communicate with our clients overseas when we come to sell things to them. 
So I look forward to those discussions happening within Telecom itself; it is Telecom’s responsibility to come up with the proposals in the first instance and it is for the Minister to discuss that and to sign those proposals off. That is as it should be and I am sure we will have something that will work very very well. 
All through the process we were also aware of a share price and share value and I am pleased to say that at the end of this process when the report was put out to the public the share price of Telecom actually went up and has gone up further since then. I know that the senior management team in Telecom has as one of its aims and objectives the regaining of the lost share value that came about because of fears of what the Government may do to this company. In actual fact those fears have not been realised. The competition that is required by this bill will be fair competition. It will enable Telecom—in our view—to build a wholesale business that it hitherto has not had. I think that share price and that value will be recouped in the fullness of time. We look forward to that.