Curran Clare: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3697. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Let us just be clear: a levy is a tax. You cannot dress it up. Levies are not intrinsically bad but this Government said there would be no new taxes. That is my first point. If you are going to introduce a new $150 million broadband tax on an industry under urgency with no consultation and no evidence that your proposal is sound then it will immediately flow on to consumers. This bill imposes an immediate tax on consumers for their internet for their landline phone for their mobile phone.Prices are going to go up and it is Amy Adams who is to blame. What this Minister is doing is one of the biggest scams this Government has tried on. It warrants examination by the Auditor-General it warrants an inquiry and I am surprised that Treasury has not commented on this legislation. But on closer examination of the departmental disclosure statement at 2.3.1 the regulatory impact statement was identified as not meeting the threshold for receiving an independent opinion on its quality from the team based in Treasury. So Treasury never even got the legislation in front of it to comment on. There is an unpleasant smell about this legislation that smacks of a Government covering up massive wasteful spending with very little to show for it. The bill needs a select committee. The whole scheme needs to be scrutinised. It was a Government election promise and it did not need urgency. There has been no consultation on the levy being increased or on the passing of it under urgency.Again I refer you to the departmental disclosure statement where it was asked whether or not there had been any external consultation on the policy to be given effect by this bill or on a draft of this bill and the answer was no. There is huge disappointment and anger about this bill being passed under urgency and with no consultation. The regulatory impact statement is misleading. All it does is reflect the Government’s decision back to itself. There is no free and frank advice.Labour absolutely recognises the educational social and economic benefits to New Zealand of better rural broadband. It was our policy that all New Zealanders deserve connectivity opportunities. Labour took comprehensive policy into the election last year in respect of extending rural and urban connectivity and addressing the digital divides that exist. No other party did the work that we did.Amy Adams’ contribution was to announce spending $150 million of the industry’s money which she knows will be passed on as a tax to consumers. Either she is too lazy or not bright enough—or she is trying to cover up the failure of the Rural Broadband Initiative—to know that you should not spend money unless you have done your homework first. Why should we care about this? Well maybe we should not care if this was a sound policy. But it is not. This legislation fast tracks Government spending and it is more money after bad. It is Government waste. It is economic mismanagement. Who is going to pay? The consumers are going to pay. To all consumers listening to this this afternoon who have got internet and phone connections your prices are going to go up.Rural New Zealand will continue to receive crap broadband. It is a flop it is a failure it is a disaster and it is a scandal. There is no proof that the Rural Broadband Initiative as it is now has worked. There are three parts to this scheme. There is the building of new towers which the Government insists is on track and I am hearing that there are issues with the capital that Vodafone requires to complete the job. The Government however insists that it is on track. However as I understand it all the easy ones have been built and the harder ones are still to be built.The second part of this scheme was a Chorus upgrade of broadband to 85000 lines which go to households and businesses. That has never been evaluated. But the biggest scam of all in the Rural Broadband Initiative is the fixed wireless component of it. That is the biggest scam. Vodafone’s role was the provision of fixed wireless broadband capable of peak speeds of at least five megabits. So how has that worked out? Well there are no figures. There has been no evaluation. We do not even know for sure how many people have actually been connected through this part of the scheme.Mysteriously into my in-box yesterday afternoon came the response from a written question from the Minister. It was the first time there has ever been any indication of numbers of people who have been connected through the fixed wireless scheme. Guess how many it was? It was 8500 people. Guess how much money was committed to that part of the scheme? It was $60 million. If you divide 8500 connections by $60 million guess how much that is? It is $7000 per connection. If that does not sound like a scam and a big scandal that warrants the Auditor-General getting involved in evaluating it I do not know what is. There are no reports. We were told by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment yesterday morning at a select committee that it had done no evaluation of the Rural Broadband Initiative and now the Minister is about to commit another $150 million to it.There is no business case. There is no real data. There has been no consultation. But there already is data—and it has not worked and if you do not believe me maybe you might believe the research that—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is not me you are trying to convince; it is the House.CLARE CURRAN: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker; my apologies. If the other side of the House does not believe me there is unpublished research that I have come across from Colmar Brunton which was done for Chorus just before the election and which shows that of 600 rural businesses and 300 rural households 68 percent are frustrated and angry with their internet connections and feel restricted and left behind. That is a pretty high figure. I am pretty sure that the Minister and her Government knew that this was an issue in rural New Zealand and miraculously 3 weeks before the election we got a new policy whereby $150 million was committed to rural broadband out of the blue with no consultation—and no consultation since—and no business case to support it.How do we know there is no evidence? Because the regulatory impact statement says so—it actually says so on its first page. The Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment has failed. It has failed big time to provide an analysis for the Minister. It is just doing the Minister’s bidding. So how do we know there has been no consultation? Because everyone in the industry says so and because the departmental report says so. How do we know it is going to be a tax on the industry? Because when any levy is imposed on an industry it is passed on.There is another issue a final issue. Rural New Zealand is standing still on broadband and it is about to get more of the same. The digital divide between rural New Zealand and urban New Zealand is being entrenched under this Government. The 5 megabits that is being provided in rural New Zealand under the existing scheme is going to be provided under the new scheme. This is treating rural New Zealand like second-class citizens or poor cousins. It is treating them with disdain. Even the US has announced a few months ago a new standard of broadband of 25 megabits per second. If we stick with 5 megabits per second then rural New Zealand is never going to go ahead. There is going to be no economic development and it is an absolute travesty and a demonstration of regional neglect and treating rural New Zealand as if it really does not matter.