Hughes Darren: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12506] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 I expect this consideration of Part 2 will be much shorter. At the select committee there was a great degree of agreement from what I can read in the commentary on the bill. The only issue I wanted to raise with the Minister in the chair the Hon Bill English for all the good it appears to be doing is what his policy objectives were in respect of amenity value and the restrictions on local government in setting that amenity value—the debate between improvement and keeping the amenity value consistent. That may be an area where local government may well feel that the bill is written in a way that could be taken as being against them and against the work that they are doing in their communities. So it would be of some use to get the Minister’s comment on that. Whether that is a big thing I am quite genuinely not sure. He could shed some light on that. 
Just in case he chooses not to maybe I should do part of his job for him and say what Part 2 does. For the people who are viewing Parliament TV this evening and need to know exactly what we are debating this is Part 2 of the Infrastructure Bill. It is a bill that was a centrepiece of the National - ACT - Maori Party Government. Sometimes it is the Maori Party - National - ACT Government but on this occasion it is the National - ACT - Maori Party Government. This is a bill that was central to reforms to the economy that would “unlock growth”—and the other phrases clichés and slogans that seem to fall by the wayside as things get so tough for the Government in politics. This bill remains stuck here in the Committee of the whole House 2 years into Government. Part 2 amends the Telecommunications Act the Electricity Act the Gas Act and the Local Government Act 1974 to provide consistency around reasonable access to corridors allocation of costs when utility operators are required to move assets and time periods for notification and response. It also amends the Railways Act 2005 and the Government Roading Powers Act 1989 to provide timeframes for responding to requests for access to rail corridors and motorways and requires controlling authorities to publish criteria on which they will base their decisions to grant access. 
Those are all matters in the bill that the Labour Opposition is in agreement with. As Darien Fenton commented earlier a lot of this work had been commenced under the previous Labour Government. That work was taking place. We believe that those changes will be of use. As I said at the beginning of my contribution there is the issue in clause 21 of setting reasonable conditions which we have made some comment on but there is also this issue of the amenity value. We would like to hear from the Minister in the chair on that. We respect the fact that he is obviously a very busy man; it is obviously a very taxing and challenging portfolio for him. 
Hon Bill English 
: Very busy. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: We have an interjection out of him. That is a great thing! The good news is he is alive and at least he will now appear in the  
Hansard 
 record as making a contribution on his own legislation which at one point a couple of Speeches from the Throne and Prime Minister’s statements ago was one of the turbocharging pieces of legislation. Goodness knows what the next 6 months of the year will be about given that so many of the initiatives in the first half of the year appear to have gone west. 
Moana Mackey 
: They’re turbocharging moving forward. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Are they turbocharging the move forward? If there is one thing— 
Hon Bill English 
: That’s Julia Gillard; that’s Australian Labor. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Mr English knows all about that. He knows all about being the loyal deputy who stabs the leader in the back. He did that when he was deputy himself then the full political circle came around and it happened to him. He would be able to tell us quite a few stories about that. 
Hon Bill English 
: That’s all going to happen in your party. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The politics of personality always get him going. One of the only ways to get him to contribute at all is to get into that nasty little side where it is all about the machinations of politics and who has sold out whom and for what reason. 
The phrase that Bill English would secretly like this Government to be known by is the “crunching of the gears” Government as it goes from fifth gear to reverse in very very quick order as policies and priorities change. Thankfully the Infrastructure Bill will not be one of those because it has the support of the Labour Party—the Minister’s best efforts notwithstanding.