Parker David: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Parker David: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19469] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I want to inquire of the Minister in the chair the Minister for Communications and Information Technology for an explanation as to why we are without any select committee involvement and with less than a day’s notice to members of Parliament being asked to remove the Kiwi share obligation for Telecom. 
For just about everyone in New Zealand in our homes and businesses the three most important utilities are water electricity and increasingly in society telecommunications. Any legislation that impacts substantially on one of those utilities ought to have the benefit of full scrutiny by members of the public by industry participants who are affected by it by consumer groups and by industries that are affected by it. I am very disappointed that yet again we have the Government deciding that it knows best. Without recourse to the normal protections that we have in New Zealand we are by a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage of the Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill—without any prior notice to political parties or the industry—having fundamental changes being made to in this case our telecommunications laws relating to the Kiwi share obligation. 
We do not know what the detailed implications are of that for our country. We are kept ignorant of that fact by the poor process that the Minister has run and this is indicative of what is now common practice not just from this Minister—although most commonly from this Minister—but also from other Ministers in the National Government who abuse the processes of this Parliament. 
This country is rare in Western democracies in that we only have a unicameral Parliament. We have one House. We do not have an Upper House to provide protections against mistakes that are made in this House. We further have the entrenchment of power in New Zealand because we do not have state Governments like most larger countries have which take responsibility for significant parts of the governance of their countries whether they are the United States or Australia. Bigger countries have state Governments as well as Parliaments that normally have more than one level. In New Zealand we are totally reliant on this one Parliament this one House of Representatives. As a consequence we in New Zealand have built into our constitutional protections select committee procedures. Those select committee procedures are very important so that we can tease out the consequences of important changes made by legislation. That is why it is unusual for this Parliament to be considering a change of this significance being made by Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee. 
We in the Labour Party were contacted today by some of the major telecommunication players in New Zealand other than Telecom. They said: “Hey were you guys aware that this document that’s just been dropped in Parliament includes changes to the Kiwi share obligation?”. Well until they told me I was not aware of that. It is not central to my responsibilities. I do not have every minute of the day to drop into the Bills Office and check every half hour as to whether another dirty trick is being played by the Minister outside of normal processes. I did not learn about this until I was sitting in a select committee this morning on estimates hearings. I was tied up until 1 o’clock this afternoon there and indeed for most of the time between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock I was preparing for question time because I had questions. I am not the most expert in this area; I readily acknowledge that. People like David Cunliffe and Clare Curran in my party are more expert. What part can David Cunliffe play in this debate today? None because on this occasion he is away on leave at a prearranged appointment. So we on this side of the Chamber cannot properly inquire into the effects of the removal of the Kiwi share obligation. That is not good enough. I want to know from the Minister why he thinks he is justified in making this change. I want to hear from him in detail the implications of this change. The explanatory note of Supplementary Order Paper 247 deals with it in two sentences: “The main effects of this Supplementary Order Paper”—and it lists some other things but I am dealing only with the Kiwi share applications—“are that it makes changes to provisions relating to deemed TSO instruments and removes references to the KSO (Kiwi share obligation) … These amendments are to reflect that the KSO will not be operative following the structural separation of Telecom:”. Does that tell us what the effect of the change will be in practice? Does it tell us what the effect of the Kiwi share obligation is now but will not be after this legislation is passed? Does it tell us the implication for consumers whether they are residential consumers businesses or competitors of Telecom? It does not tell us about the implications. For example does the Kiwi share obligation include any obligation on the dominant organisation Telecom to treat its competitors fairly or do we find all of those provisions in the Commerce Act? I do not know the answer to that. It is a fair question for me to ask. 
The Minister for Communications and Information Technology shakes his head. I do not know whether he will tell us but I would like not just the benefit of the Minister’s advice but also the benefit of advice from competitors in the industry on whether the Minister is being fulsome in his explanations or whether the Minister might be making a mistake. The Minister might have the best intentions in the world but Ministers make mistakes. We see that often. Indeed these very changes that have been made to this legislation late in the piece are perhaps reflective of the fact that he has made mistakes earlier in this process. So why should we in this Parliament trust that other mistakes are not being made? 
Mr Finlayson the Attorney-General in the Government got on his high horse and criticised prior Governments for poor process in making legislation. Legislation made in haste too often leads to consequences that have not been properly thought through by this Parliament. Given that this infrastructure area is one of the most important areas of infrastructure that we need in New Zealand not just for businesses but also for individuals—rural farming customers and residential people in towns and cities—I would have thought that we should be properly considering the effect of abolishing the Kiwi share obligation. We should remember that the Kiwi share obligation was seen as a really important and fundamental part of the protection for consumers and for New Zealanders that we were to have following Telecom being privatised some time ago. It has been a fundamental part of the protection of consumer interest since that time and here we are at this late stage in the process with a one sentence explanation in this bill that the Government is abolishing it. 
I would like a detailed explanation from the Minister as to the effect of that abolition. I am absolutely aghast that members of Parliament have not been provided with any report on the effect of the change. We have not had the opportunity to ask departmental officials for advice as we would have done through a select committee. We have not had the opportunity to hear from submitters. We have not had the opportunity to go to the Parliamentary Library and research questions that we want to ask. We have had a mere matter of hours to come to terms with it. 
We are completely reliant upon the disclosures that are made by the Government as a consequence of the poor process that is being followed. It makes me very uncomfortable and I think that given that we are a unicameral institution with no other checks and balances on the way in which we conduct ourselves in this Parliament critics outside of this place would be rightly concerned that this is poor poor process and that by the time the voting on this legislation is called upon we will not have been able to get to the bottom of it. 
We will be voting against this bill because we do not know the effects of it. The Minister may not even properly understand the effects of it and we have not had the opportunity at a select committee to assess the true position.