Faafoi Kris: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3708. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is my pleasure to take a call on this Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill. One hundred and fifty million dollars is a lot of money. It is a lot of money for this House to expend so if we are going to do that we want to make sure that it is going to be an effective use of money. When it comes to the Rural Broadband Initiative 2 and the $150 million of funding that this bill is basically going to create we want to make sure that the Rural Broadband Initiative 1 has been effective. For those at home who do not know what the Rural Broadband Initiative 1 is that is roughly about $300 million—$250 million of which has come from the telecommunications development levy—that has helped some of our remote areas in our rural sector become more connected. There are many many reasons why that is good for our country—and they have been said on both sides of the House—like obviously the primary sector the health and well-being of our remote areas and of course economic development.The reason why we have a problem with this piece of legislation is that we have not had enough of an assessment of the Rural Broadband Initiative 1—the first $300 million of this programme—to see whether or not it has been effective. At the Commerce Committee—a select committee that would have loved to have seen this bill by the way; I will come back to that later—we heard from a number of submitters just I think—Clare Curran: Yesterday.KRIS FAAFOI: —yesterday morning. Oh it seems so long ago! Yesterday morning we heard about the lack of assessment that has been done about the spending and the effectiveness of the Rural Broadband Initiative 1. We do have an issue with this piece of legislation: with it being a new tax of course but also because we have not seen enough evidence of the effectiveness of the Rural Broadband Initiative 1.I do want to point to a submission given to us yesterday by InternetNZ at the Commerce Committee if I may where it pointed out its concern around the lack of assessment of the Rural Broadband Initiative 1. This came about via three areas of Otago that have petitioned the Commerce Committee about the lack of effectiveness in their experience of the Rural Broadband Initiative. Basically they do not think that this initiative has served their communities well and that it has not made them as connected as was promised by the Government. InternetNZ said in its submission: “These petitioners are motivated not by a lack of clarity but by a lack of satisfaction and we see a different requirement. This could call for a verification of commitments made as part of the RBI delivery to ensure that whichever provider responsible is delivering the expectations that were set. Have the committed time frames for the Rural Broadband Initiatives been met? Is the minimum speed commitment of 5 megabits per second also being met?”.So there is concern out there in those rural communities. They were promised a service of 5 megabits per second but that has not been their experience. For us to sit here and say that that is the experience of $300 million of investment and we are about to say here is another $150 million for the second phase of the Rural Broadband Initiative then we on this side of the House think we need a better assessment of whether that $300 million that has been spent on the Rural Broadband Initiative 1 has been spent effectively.There are some good things in this bill I believe especially around the black spots. I think that is a good development in terms of State Highway 1—if someone can look at the Ngauranga Gorge that would be quite useful—and also for tourism as well. If we can get the Government to look at those black spot areas that will be useful.This piece of legislation does not meet the test for us to support it because as I said $150 million is the commitment here. That is $50 million for each year that we are continuing this levy—a levy that was not necessarily promised. We want to know if we are going to be spending $150 million more whether the first $300 million was spent effectively. Communities in small remote rural areas around this country do not think that is the case. InternetNZ—a bit of a watchdog for these kinds of issues—does not believe that is the case. Because of that we share those concerns and we are not going to support this piece of legislation.