Hide Rodney: Telecommunications Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Hide Rodney: Telecommunications Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:7155] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I do not want to rehash what we covered earlier but I have to say that one of the things that must concern us as a Parliament is that we know that one regulation invariably means more regulations. I heard Dr Lockwood Smith say that this bill has removed the sword of Damocles from hanging over Telecom when in fact after listening to that member and to Mr Doug Woolerton and after watching the Minister assent to their comments I believe that the sword has been put there again. 
Why do I say that? I say that because the first concern raised by Mr Doug Woolerton was about cherry-picking. This is the idea—Heaven forbid—that companies and investors would put their money where they could get a return! Is that not what we expect companies to do? Is that not how we expect them to manage their resources? No that now becomes in the language of this Parliament cherry-picking! Mr Woolerton wants to say that companies should invest their money where the costs are so high that they cannot get a return. Because he lives like Dr Lockwood Smith in a beautiful part of New Zealand down 10 kilometres of copper wire he says everyone else should have to pay for him to have the access that people can get in downtown Auckland. Mr Woolerton says that Telecom should carry that cost so should the users and shareholders or otherwise it is cherry-picking. 
 I was stunned to hear Dr Lockwood Smith of the National Party concur with that—that somehow this Parliament is going to force people to put their investments in that other place. I watched the Minister nod when Dr Lockwood Smith said National would be monitoring the outcomes of this legislation and I asked myself what we will do if the outcome is not what we expect it to be—which will surely be the case. What will we do if the outcome is less than we expect? It will surely be that. And what will we as a Parliament do if Dr Lockwood Smith cannot download where he lives on his beautiful farm at 5 megabytes a second for his entertainment needs? What will we do then? Well I suspect that in a couple of years’ time we will be back here beating up Telecom again for not doing what Parliament expects it to do. 
I say to members in this House that we are making a terrible mistake when we try to regulate for outcomes when we split up a company and when we pinch its property rights because that is what unbundling is all about. 
I have a lot of respect for Mr Doug Woolerton. I know he has spent a lot of time milking cows and contributing to this country and I know how excited he was when speaking to this bill. I have never seen him as animated as he was then. In fact I wanted to give him some pills to calm him down because I thought that in his advanced years as a member of New Zealand First he might not be able to access a senior card to the full extent of his entitlement. Mr Woolerton was excited beyond all belief and then went on to make some extraordinary statements. I think in his excitement he became carried away with his rhetoric. He suggested that somehow Telecom had not invested enough that somehow it had not done enough in the way of technical advance and that somehow it was not running its business right. 
I do not know the basis on which Mr Woolerton made those claims. It must be on the basis of his great achievements while working in the telecommunications industry and at the top level of business and merchant banking in New Zealand which we are yet to hear about. But does Mr Woolerton seriously think that if we had left the New Zealand Post Office to run our telecommunications as a monopoly—and Doug Woolerton would have opposed the sale and deregulation of it—we would have Internet use in New Zealand? It would have banned it! The New Zealand Post Office did not want to have fax machines because of what they would do to telegrams. I say to Mr Woolerton that the benefits he enjoys today are the result of efficient business of investment of deregulation and of—[ 
Interruption 
] Whose money did Vodafone use to put in its network? I ask him where that came from. It is not as though the New Zealand Post Office would ever have built a mobile phone network for us to use. My goodness! 
So I say to this House that we should oppose this bill. It is a pinching of property rights. It is this Parliament trying to run business. It will be counterproductive for investment in New Zealand and for telecommunications. I am proud to be in the ACT party and as I look around the House I invite others to join with us and vote for property rights for private contracts and for free enterprise. I advise them not to join the National Party and vote for communism which is what is happening here today.