Heatley Phil: Communications Legislation Bill — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Communications Legislation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:5595] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I would like to contribute to Part 1 which amends the Telecommunications Act and particularly clause 4 “Expiry of designated services and specified services”. I must say it is with some disappointment that the National Party sees that the Minister in the chair the Hon David Parker through lack of leadership has now got a situation where the Commerce Commission has to have 2 extra years to deal with the complexities of the 10 provisions in clause 4. 
The Minister might see that as some source of amusement but I can tell him that there are constituents citizens right throughout this country—they do not measure in the hundreds they do not measure in the thousands and they do not measure in the tens of thousands; they measure in the hundreds of thousands—who are very frustrated indeed about local telephone number portability; frustrated about national roaming; frustrated about cellular telephone number portability; frustrated about retail services offered by means of Telecom’s fixed telecommunications network as part of a bundle of retail services; and frustrated about the myriad issues that have not been addressed by his Government since I believe Paul Swain was the Minister. Paul Swain spoke about the Telecommunications Amendment Bill back in 2001. The Minister Mr Parker might want to take time to do the maths now: that is 5 years ago. Paul Swain said at that time that “for the first time we have established a framework for ensuring that the telecommunications industry can move forward in an orderly way”. He never said it can move forward in a snail’s orderly way. He never said it can move forward in the orderly way such as a turtle would move. He never said it would move forward in the orderly way of a rock. He said it would move forward and we suspected it would move forward with some haste. 
But it is now half a decade on. In those 5 years the voice of the member for Kapiti has broken. He has started shaving. Any time now we will hear a maiden speech from him. He will actually speak in this House. He will not just stand up to move that the bill go to the next stage; he will actually make a speech in the House. In those 5 years the National Party would have liked to see more progress than simply the Minister coming cap in hand to the House to ask for a 2-year extension. I do not think that Paul Swain had that in mind. 
On the key issue of increasing New Zealand’s broadband uptake the Telecommunications Commissioner Douglas Webb began his investigation into unbundling in 2002. In September 2003 Webb released his draft recommendations. His final report in December 2003 recommended only unbundled bitstream access. The Government accepted this report in 2004 and hurriedly announced its decision in 2006. This of course brought into question the role of the Telecommunications Commissioner and the Government’s commitment to the process and the original time line. But it never brought into question the Government’s commitment to provide telecommunications access for not hundreds not thousands not tens of thousands of New Zealanders but hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. It never brought into question its commitment except today we see a 2-year extension. The Minister is requesting another 2 years for those hundreds and thousands of Kiwis who want decent telecommunications in a First World country.