Shaw James: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3707. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Green): I rise to speak to the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill and to agree with virtually all of the previous speakers on this bill. What does the bill do? It increases the existing levy it extends the Rural Broadband Initiative and it creates a mobile black spots fund.The ultra-fast broadband roll-out around New Zealand has not been smooth over the last few years but it is critical. Although it has had its rough spots it is incredibly important that it continues and that it gets completed. That is because ultra-fast broadband is an absolutely critical piece of New Zealand’s economic infrastructure.I have just spent most of the last 10 weeks travelling around places like Northland Gisborne New Plymouth Whakatāne the Coromandel Whanganui and down to Invercargill—incredibly remote places around New Zealand. The divide between our rural and provincial towns and our main urban centres is enormous. If they do not have access to broadband it is going to get worse and worse and worse. As my colleague Gareth Hughes said that is because the internet provides us not just with economic infrastructure but with access to educational opportunities to health care opportunities and with the ability to connect with one another.In terms of the economy of course the digital economy is how we are going to get to a sustainable smart Green economy which the Green Party has been talking about for years and years and years and the idea of weightless exports where we can earn huge amounts of revenue without having to transport heavy goods or pollute or degrade the environment. Given the tyranny of distance that New Zealand has historically been subjected to this is an absolutely critical piece of infrastructure for us.I will also just say something about the mobile black spots. In addition to the safety component to it this is a really significant tourism issue. An increasing portion of our tourism dollars are coming from particularly China and East Asia and South Asia where the expectation is that you are connected all the time. It is actually not meeting our tourists’ expectations that they are travelling around parts of New Zealand and they cannot connect to the internet and to Facebook to be able to post their photos and so on. Of course that word of mouth gets back to their home countries and it weakens our reputation in the tourism sector. Most significantly as I was saying before this is about the rural economy and our ability to develop in areas where we currently have a massive divide. Not getting this piece of infrastructure in place will make it even worse.As my colleague Gareth Hughes said we do have some concerns about the bill. It does seem odd to us that the Government is currently consulting on how it will spend the money and is passing a bill under urgency for raising the money that it is currently trying to work out how to spend. That does seem like putting the cart before the horse but we can work with that because we do believe that this is so important to get through. Having said that it does seem odd that this bill is being passed under urgency. There does not seem to be any real need for it to get passed tonight. It could go through a proper process of evaluation through the select committee process and so on.We will be putting forward two Supplementary Order Papers later on during the debate which are about promoting competition promoting diversity in the system and exploring new technologies as well. The second Supplementary Order Paper is to prevent telecommunications companies from having two bites of the cherry. We do hope that they will get accepted and that they will improve the bill given that it is passing through under urgency so quickly after the Budget. Overall we do support this bill and I commend it to the House.