Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I add to the comments of previous speakers. As my colleague from the Labour Party Clare Curran has already mentioned the Labour Party is fully supportive of this bill—both legs of it. The first leg in respect of enabling access along common property is one that is easy to understand. If four people have an undivided interest in a driveway that is servicing four flats then at law an interference with that driveway requires the consent of all four unless we in this Parliament confer a right on one person in concert with their technology provider by law giving that person if they want it the right to carry out low-impact activities. Low-impact activities can include a trench up a right of way into which plastic pipe is put and the fibre is laid through that pipe. Eventually one of the reasons why this is an appropriate thing to do—to effectively override if you like the property rights of the three that are not involved in favour of the fourth—is that over time everyone will benefit and that pipe will be able to be used to supply fibre for the four properties at the end of that driveway even if at the start it is only servicing one. So there is a very low impact on the private property rights.It is an interesting example where the National Government is effectively agreeing that there is a limit to private property rights that this is an appropriate limit to the private property right and that there is a community interest in enabling the delivery of infrastructure such as fibre notwithstanding the fact that one of those property rights owners might object.Hon Gerry Brownlee: It's not extensive and they have still got to behave themselves. They don't at the moment.Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes. No they do have to behave themselves. I agree and they cannot go too far and they cannot damage fences and things and there has been a bit of that at times. It is interesting that this is occurring just a couple of weeks after the Productivity Commission reported on the Resource Management Act and other legislation affecting resource management in New Zealand. It has got a very good analysis in its report of the limits to private property rights because although you hear from groups—including I think The New Zealand Initiative—at times over-describing the private property rights that the landowner has in New Zealand it is interesting that I think the Government has got it right here to recognise that there is a proper limit to the private property right of the individual property owner and that the community right and the community interest in the delivery of this infrastructure is such that the rights of the individual property owner can effectively be overridden in this limited way to ensure that the infrastructure is put in in a cost-effective and timely manner.The area that the Commerce Committee members—on all sides—pushed to improve was for rural areas. As my colleague Clare Curran said it started with a submission from Northpower which is a provider of lines services in the North coming and saying: Well look it would be useful if existing electricity infrastructure including lamp posts"—which often cross private land or the lines between the lamp posts and the lamp posts themselves are often sited on or over private land—"could be used also to deliver ultra-fast broadband." Of course that is the most cost-effective way of doing it. Just about every house in New Zealand has electric wires leading to it and they are strung along lamp posts and it is sensible that they be used to service these areas particularly where the economics of delivering fibre is worse because of the low concentrations of population.There is of course a historical precedent for this and I suspect that Federated Farmers were mindful of that historical precedent when they came to the select committee and supported the proposal. When electricity was first distributed throughout New Zealand that was done through power poles and wires being delivered throughout the country in the most cost-effective means possible which generally meant taking a straight line across private property which was done generally with the approval of the landowner—I suspect sometimes it was without the approval of the landowner—and once put in those electricity poles power poles and the lines had a right to stay there prescribed or set out in the Electricity Act. It is the Electricity Act that in that situation effectively overrides the private property right of the landowner. There was a quid pro quo in society where through that accommodation between the State which was rolling out electricity across the country around the time of World War II and after—before and after World War II. There were some areas that were not connected I think until as late as about 1950. It was that arrangement between the State and private owners that saw the faster and more cost-effective distribution of electricity throughout the land. I know that in retrospect some of the farming groups have said "Hey this is not fair. We now want to be paid for the existence of those power poles." but actually in truth most farmers either agreed to it at the time or bought subject to that impediment. So I do not think they suffer any unfairness in having to put up with that continuing presence of the power lines for no recompense because that was the state of their property rights when they purchased it in the first place. Against that precedent you can see when the select committee started to look at the Northpower recommendation that it thought that it was actually the same in principle as the roll-out of electricity all those decades ago. Even better than that there is even less inconvenience to the landowner on this occasion because the power poles and power lines are already there. This is just stringing an extra wire from them which is unlikely even to be noticed. So the select committee I think got to a very sensible point.I congratulate Federated Farmers and also the regional lines companies. It is interesting that a lot of those lines companies are still community-owned. I think that is a good thing for New Zealand. I know that there are some people around who think that we should be forcing the consolidation of these various lines companies so that we have got fewer of them. I disagree. I do not mind them being owned by their local communities. If there are inefficiencies in the way in which they maintain that infrastructure they can always group together a bit like councils group together and deliver shared services these days. You do not actually have to push the ownership together. I like the fact that we actually effectively have co-ops for the delivery of our rural lines. I really like the fact that those community organisations do not have a purely commercial motive. They have a service motive when it comes to servicing the needs of their people. They actually I think will step up to the mark and say: "Hey this is something that we can do for the benefit of our community. We expect a reasonable rate of return for it but it will be cheaper than any other way of delivering fibre to those rural networks." So it seems to me that everyone wins. The dispersed communities in rural areas are more likely to receive fibre earlier than they would otherwise have received it; whether it is earlier or otherwise it is likely to be cheaper than it would have been otherwise because it is utilising that expensive infrastructure; and it is avoiding the legal costs of seeking easements and those negotiations that are to be honest a bit of a pain for everyone on all sides including often the landowner. So it will be cheaper and more convenient and it will mean that we have got better broadband services. Why is that important? In my view broadband services to rural areas are important for maximising the economy of those local areas for bringing new economic opportunities to rural areas through new industries and also—and I think this is perhaps underemphasised at times—for ensuring that we can use technology to achieve better levels of environmental performance on farm. The automation through sensor technology mobile devices and feeding back through broadband—or through mobile for that matter; both are appropriate channels—to the regulator and to the farm manager information about moisture levels nitrate levels and run-off levels to rivers will be enabled by this modern technology. It is one of the routes to get back to cleaner rivers in New Zealand. As we know in many parts of the country they are now so polluted you cannot swim in them. So technology is an important part of that answer. This amendment agreed to at select committee and now being passed by this House will aid us in doing better on that front too."