Brownlee Gerry: Consumer Protection (Definitions of Goods and Services) Bill — In Committee 
Brownlee Gerry: Consumer Protection (Definitions of Goods and Services) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6882] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: In speaking to Part 1 I want to pick up on a couple of comments made by my colleague Brent Catchpole who was on the Commerce Committee right through the process of the bill. 
Brent Catchpole 
: Only the latter part. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Perhaps that explains some of the member’s contribution tonight. One of the interesting things about this bill is that the term “manufacturer of electricity” is not in the bill. “Supplier” is there as is “provider” so that captures the lines companies and local energy companies. But the manufacturer—the State generator—is out of it. The reason is that this Government knows that the whole infrastructure of electricity in this country has turned into custard in the last 4 years and we have seen no new investment in generation. For each of those 4 years we have needed some 150 megawatts of new generation about 450 megawatts in total and what have we had? We have had about 100 megawatts. If this bill had been effective on the manufacturers the generators from the start of this winter then the Government would have faced a very huge bill indeed as consumers decided to exercise their protection under this legislation against the manufacturers. 
So I think we are seeing here another one of the Labour Party’s “dress it up and hope it looks good” types of bills. As our colleague Tony Ryall has pointed out—that is the Hon Tony Ryall the last great Minister of Commerce that this country has had— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: I was never Minister of Commerce; I was the Minister of Justice. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: He was the Minister of Justice but as such he knew more about commerce than the present Minister knows about her own city. It is unbelievable. 
The real point here is that in a few minutes Georgina te Heuheu will table a document that outlines the extraordinary costs that this legislation will put upon South Island councils in places where there is no worry about water quality—although they most definitely have a worry about water quantity. We will see Marc Alexander Clayton Cosgrove Tim Barnett Ruth Dyson Lianne Dalziel and quite probably Damien O’Connor all voting for this huge impost upon South Island ratepayers. 
Hon Member 
: How much? 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The best I can estimate is that their vote tonight will cost their constituents and mine some $70 million. [ 
Interruption 
] Clayton Cosgrove sits over there and says his constituents can afford it. The good citizens of Waimakariri can dive into their pockets and pull out $70 million and he says that it does not matter. Well it does matter because Canterbury has some of the best-quality water in the world and I will keep saying that right throughout the debate on this bill. By the end of it some Labour members may understand the point that by saying the whole country has to have the same water standard as Auckland’s some of us will get done. That is just unacceptable. 
I return for a moment to the issue I spoke of earlier in the day—telecommunications. Telecommunications is not included in the bill. This Government touts constantly the opportunities that this country will have from the knowledge wave—from the great technological advance that this country is likely to experience at some point. But this bill does not cover broadband Internet access. If we happen to live in the right part of the country we will receive whatever the provider of the service gives us and we will have no right to question the quality of that. Worse than that the people who live in some parts of the country particularly in rural New Zealand will be out of luck totally.