Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I thank the Minister for Communications for bringing forward this bill. I think it is great that in New Zealand we have got cross-party agreement about the importance of fibre connection. It really is not an issue that should be too political. We have had successive Governments running some pretty good telecommunications policy in New Zealand for well over a decade now—it is about 15 years since we saw the deregulatory moves and the structural separation of what was Telecom which was split into what is now Chorus and Spark. We have had the Government intervention to advance the speed at which fibre is rolled out in New Zealand. There is cross-party agreement that this is a good thing to do. I do not think there are many if any parties in this Parliament that disagree that it is a good thing to do.The reason we agree is that it enables improvements in a lot of aspects of society. The one that is most common for people—the ability to get through the internet things that used to come through the television—is in some ways less important than some of the other advantages but it enables things like more efficient delivery of Government services to people. It enables telemedicine so that people in rural areas can get a better quality of medical care. It enables improvements in education—again particularly relevant to rural schools where they can through fibre deliver more specialised subjects to their pupils particularly in secondary schools that might not otherwise be able to be delivered to a small area school.But most important of all it seems to me—or equally important I should say rather than necessarily more important—are the commercial benefits that arise from ultra-fast broadband (UFB). We are now at a stage in the world where we have a lot of enabling technologies that have been matured and that are important to New Zealand improving the economy which we share the fruits of. We have the necessary telecommunications capability in our telecommunications companies. We have got ubiquitous mobile technology. We have got increasingly common UFB capability. We have affordable computing power. We have sensor technologies that are affordable. These things combine through the internet of things and as a consequence there is a myriad of new commercial opportunities that are made possible by these new technologies whether it is in precision agriculture—or selling precision agriculture products to the world—or whether it is new software verticals where clever New Zealand software companies can develop services that not only are relevant to New Zealand but also have a global reach and can be sold internationally in a way that lifts the value of our economy. Fibre is an important ingredient of that so I am pleased that we are making progress in the installation of fibre. It is true that the Auditor-General recently produced a report that was complimentary of the way in which fibre is now being rolled out in New Zealand—and long may that continue.I would say that sometimes the media cycle is a little bit unkind to Ministers and I would not be doing my duty as an Opposition member of Parliament if I did not actually hold up today's New Zealand Herald with the front-page story—instead of ultra-fast broadband it has ultra-shoddy broadband". There is a litany of problems here. On the front page here there is a photo of someone who "has been left with an infrastructure timebomb after fibre-optic cables were installed at his Howick home." It turns out that these problems are not isolated because if there was only one problem then you would not see this on the front of the New Zealand Herald today. There is a litany of similar problems where shoddy levels of installation service have resulted in these cables being left in places where they are obviously not going to last: the weather is going to get into them people will kick them or drive over them or in any other number of ways these things are going to be problematic into the future. There are examples where two neighbours have got fibre-optic cables on their fences held up by duct tape. Duct tape is the installation method that is being used by Chorus in respect of some.Chorus admits to its credit that this is substandard. But it does appear that according to the people in the paper Chorus had dismissed requests to bury the cables rather than hang them off fences with duct tape. Of course the people who are in receipt of these services are worried that if the fibre fails they will not only suffer the loss of service but also get a bill to fix it. So they think that more should be done to make sure that broadband is installed properly. These exposed cables worry residents—in fact that is the heading on page 3. The litany of complaints does not just cover half of it; actually it is the only front-page story. It does not just cover the whole of the front page; it is also continued on page 3 of the newspaper. Although it is true that there is cross-party support for this and although it is true that it is very important to the development of our economy and to society more generally it is also true that it is not without problems.Can I also mention a couple of other issues. One of the tensions that we now have in New Zealand is that over time as New Zealand transitions effectively from copper-based services to a combination of mobile broadband and ultra-fast broadband—both of which can deliver telephone services as well—there is a question of how much money you spend on copper maintenance and for how long. I know that the Minister does not think that we should have advanced planning of this; she thinks that we should leave it all to the industry. I am not sure that that is right because in the end someone is going to have to make a call eventually as to what is the right signal to have as to when we should be turning off the old technology and moving to the new. The Minister is not even prepared to contemplate having that conversation. But if she is not going to have that conversation then we need to pay particular care as to whether there is going to be enough money spent on maintaining copper in the meantime.We know another complaint that we have had in the last couple of weeks is that with the big rain events throughout New Zealand we have had more complaints about water getting into the old copper-based system which means that there is a lot of static in and inferior performance of the old copper-based services for those who use them. Those copper-based services remain essential still for the majority of people in their homes because most people still have a landline and most people now still use landline-based broadband for their internet. It is not as good as UFB. It is better than it was but unless it is properly maintained we are going to have problems there.One other issue that is raised by this legislation—I will not go again through the land access issues that my colleague David Shearer has explained very well with the cascading level of approval you need depending on the seriousness of the intervention. I agree that those proposals look sound and I am sure that the select committee will look into the detail of them. But there are also some changes made to the telecommunications development levy. This is a matter that has not got universal support within the industry. The industry does question it and I think that submissions will be made to the select committee by participants not just to the changes that are being made that are said to reduce some of the complexity and compliance costs associated with the telecommunications development levy but I expect that there will be some submissions made as to the levy itself.Finally one of the challenges we have in New Zealand is in rural areas. I am not yet convinced that we have got the balance right in terms of the push into rural areas. There have been a lot of complaints from councils around the country complaining that their residents cannot get decent broadband and that the rural broadband services that have been pushed by the Government have not been up to the mark. I know I have had complaints from some of the telecommunications providers that there is some anti-competitive behaviour they think in respect of the two dominant players who are reluctant to share aerials. If you have got to have more than one tower that is more expensive. We have got to the point where the providers seem to agree that they will have one tower but they insist on more than one aerial despite the fact that there are technological solutions that would enable them to share one aerial and therefore allow for broadband to be pushed into rural areas more cost-effectively. That is not UFB; that is mobile-based broadband but it is a necessary substitute in some rural areas."