Parker David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3725. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Well that does deserve a reply. That member Judith Collins used broadband repeatedly in respect of her dealings with Cameron Slater where she showed herself to be morally bankrupt—which is why she is now on the backbenches.Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take offence at that.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Yes the member has taken offence. I ask him just to withdraw that comment.Hon DAVID PARKER: Point of order Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No I ask you to withdraw that comment.Hon DAVID PARKER: Point of order—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member has taken offence. Any member can take offence and if a member takes offence I ask the member to withdraw the comment.Hon DAVID PARKER: I withdraw the comment. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Could you please tell me which of my comments was unparliamentary?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The member took offence. It is not for me to judge. The member took offence at statements that were made and she brought it to my attention. On that basis I have asked you to withdraw the comment which you have done and now we will proceed.Hon DAVID PARKER: That member who just criticised a person outside of the House who was unable to defend themself was removed from her post as a Minister for disreputable conduct. There were about five or six instances—Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take offence at that. I was not removed for disreputable conduct. It is completely false.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): That is a debating point—[Interruption] That is a debating point and we are going to proceed.Hon DAVID PARKER: —the first of which was the conflict of interest that she had in respect of Oravida which was a company that her husband got paid by and she took steps to advance their interests and then lied to the media and misrepresented the position to the Prime Minister. Having showed herself—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon Judith Collins: I seek leave to make a personal explanation in accordance with the rules in relation to the accusations made by the Hon David Parker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.Hon Judith Collins: Mr David Parker is quite incorrect. I was not removed for disreputable behaviour. In fact I was asked to resign on the basis that I was accused by way of an email to somebody else from someone else. It had nothing to do with me. There was an allegation for which I was utterly cleared by the Chisholm inquiry. In addition Mr Parker has long commented on a Mr Pleasance. That matter has been dealt with by the Privacy Commissioner. I have been cleared of that as well. I was cleared by the Cabinet Office of any conflict of interest and actually Mr Parker knows that well. He of course did resign as Attorney-General.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): All right we are now on the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill and I ask all speakers from now on in to concentrate on the substance of that debate.Hon DAVID PARKER: What rubbish! That is not correct at all. History shows that that is not correct.This bill is said by the Government not to be in the nature of a tax. We heard that from the Minister at first reading and at second reading. Yet in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment’s own departmental disclosure statement it is asked a form question. It is asked: “Does this Bill create or amend a power to impose a fee levy or charge in the nature of a tax?”. In bold writing and capitals on page 8: “Yes”—yes. The Minister then said that this would not result in any increase in charges to consumers and yet already we have a press release from Spark saying that it will; the average person’s bill will go up by about $1 every month. That is $12 a year for an increase in a connection fee. To quote Spark: “ ‘The bill for this from the Government to Spark New Zealand averages out at almost $1 per month for each of our consumer and business broadband and mobile customers.’ ” So that is for people who are using bandwidth both in broadband at home and also through mobile devices.Everyone I think in this Parliament recognises that the roll-out of broadband is a good thing. No one disputes that. What we do dispute is the competence of this Government which just months ago was saying that it was going to cost only $10 million a year—in respect of this particular cross-subsidisation—to roll it out across rural areas whereas now it is saying that that cost is going to be $50 million per annum. This is in an environment that as the Government says has virtually zero inflation. So in an environment where inflation is running at zero how come the costs have ballooned so that the cross-subsidy that has to be paid through this mechanism has risen from $10 million per annum to $50 million per annum? The answer is that the Government is doing it incompetently. That is also apparent from the fact that the Rural Broadband Initiative is being ignored by some consumers who are going around the side of that not getting the cross-subsidy that is available through the Rural Broadband Initiative. Instead they are without subsidy going about their business and using wireless technology to get broadband.That is why we are opposing this bill. If the Government had come to New Zealanders at the start and said “Look this is the full cost of the roll-out of broadband. There will be some cross-subsidy between cities and rural areas to ensure that rural areas will get it.” I think all New Zealanders would have gone along with that. We certainly would have on this side of the House. But to then come along and pretend that a failed Rural Broadband Initiative which is now coming in over the original budgets obviously and is not doing what it was originally promised to do—to come to us and say “Oh look please there is nothing happening there that needs scrutiny.” well we just do not buy that.Here we are under urgency. We heard one of the prior speakers from the National Party throwing off at the release from the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum the TCF. That release complains that “ ‘This Bill has been introduced under urgency and doing so avoids any public debate.’ ” That is why this is being done under urgency. It is not because it is urgent. This measure does not take effect until next year so it does not need to be done under urgency. Now Government members slag that off. Do you know who the writer of that press release was? It was Mr Thorn the former chief executive of the Parliamentary Service. He knows how parliamentary processes are meant to work. That is why he is critical of this being done under urgency. He also notes that it “extends a tax which to date has not been explicitly recovered from consumers.” and that the industry cannot continue to absorb the tax.The Minister for Communications will soon be sitting in the chair during the Committee stage and I want the Minister to stand up and tell me that I am wrong when I read out the departmental disclosure statement at paragraph 4.2 which asks “Does this bill create or amend a power to impose a fee levy or charge in the nature of a tax?” and answers “Yes”. I would like her to tell me how I am misreading that because I cannot reconcile that with her statement that it is not in the nature of a tax. Look I do not know. This is the Minister for the Environment who seems to think that dirty water is clean water—[Interruption] She did when she was the Minister for the Environment—so maybe there is some consistency of principle between those two ridiculous statements.I also want to say that she is still contending that there is going to be no on-charge to consumers. I cannot work that one out either.Dr David Clark: Industry says there is.Hon DAVID PARKER: I know the industry says there is; I have read that out already as you did earlier Dr Clark. It is absolutely clear that this will result in an increase in charges.It is a tax. It is because the Government’s financial performance is so poor that it can no longer absorb the Rural Broadband Initiative through the Crown balance sheet. That is essentially what has happened. It was going to pay some of this out of Crown finances but its mismanagement of the economy is such that it can now no longer afford to do so and so it is going to charge what is effectively a tax on consumers. That is what is happening here. The Government has not consulted on it. It says it has. I have no doubt that it consults regularly with the community but again in its regulatory impact statement and its departmental disclosure statement it says it has not in respect of this. That is confirmed by the telecommunications industry in its releases today so again I expect the Minister to be saying how she can justify those comments when her departmental report says it is wrong and when we have had two releases—from both the industry body generally and from our largest telecommunications company Spark—to say that that is not the case.I just want to return to this issue of how incredible it is that the Government needs another $40 million per annum when inflation is running at virtually zero. How does that happen? The Crown says that the reason it is not hitting surplus is that we have got such low inflation that people’s wages are not going up as much as it thought they would and therefore it is not collecting as much tax. There is a little bit of truth in that. We all acknowledge that with low inflation wages and costs do not go up by as much. So how could you in a zero-inflation environment need to come along to this House and seek authority for $50 million per annum? I tell you what. It is because the Government is incompetent in respect of telecommunications companies. We saw it with the Chorus fiasco last year when it was going to override the regulator when it was trying to help out its mates at the big end of town. The telecommunications companies came out and spoke out against the Government at that stage. And what are they getting in response? Because they spoke out last time they are now getting whacked with a levy of $50 million—because the Government did not like them exposing the incompetence of the Government last year in the telecommunications space in respect of Chorus. That is why the Labour Party is opposing this legislation not because we oppose the roll-out of broadband in rural areas.