Fenton Darien: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12508] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I will speak to Part 2 of the Infrastructure Bill. It is good to see that members opposite have had some further unclogging of their arteries and that the Minister in the chair the Minister for Infrastructure has stirred himself as has a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. It is good to have a contribution from them. 
I will go through Part 2. My colleague Darren Hughes has talked about the purpose of Part 2 which is stated in clause 19(1) to be: “to amend a variety of Acts relating to utility operators’ access to transport corridors in order to achieve greater certainty and consistency in the rights and obligations of utility operators and corridor managers.” 
Starting with the amendments to the Telecommunications Act 2001 I cannot help but note the irony in having this bill go through its Committee stage today when other things are happening that apply to every single worker in the country. Before I get on to that though I recall that in the first reading of this bill Clare Curran Labour’s spokesperson on communications was talking about the situation in the telecommunications industry with regard to the Visionstream workers who were contracted out by Telecom and who went from being “employed” to being “self-employed” and the consequences of that on the telecommunications industry. I think Clare Curran is very very good in constantly calling the Government to account on its broadband strategy and on how that is rolling out although it seems to be stalling somewhat appallingly at the moment. 
I turn to clause 21 “Criteria for setting reasonable conditions”. I would ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Bill English whether he could define the word “reasonable”. The reason I want him to do so is that I know that the Minister of Labour currently has a proposal to remove the access of workers to their union unless their employer agrees to that access and that agreement cannot be “unreasonably” withheld. There is a whole lot of real difficulties around what is meant by “reasonable” and “unreasonable”. I would like some answers because that might help us when it comes to considering what the Minister of Labour is proposing. 
I also note the irony of clause 22 “Notice requirement”. The previous speaker Michael Woodhouse talked about lining up the notice requirements for the various utility operators which other speakers have also spoken about. We support that. We think it is reasonable that utility operators should be given notice just as we think it is reasonable that workers who are to lose their jobs should be given notice. But indeed under the Government’s proposals for the 90-day Act workers will not be given notice. It is not required. In terms of clauses 22 to 25 I would like the Minister to tell us what he thinks the words “notice” and “reasonable notice” mean. 
New section 147A “Local authority etc may require lines etc to be moved” which is to be inserted in the Telecommunications Act by clause 28 did not come up in the debate on Part 1 but there was a long debate in the select committee about the definitions of “local authority” “wastewater” and “water requirements”. A great deal of concern was expressed and I think that concern is still there given that the Minister of Local Government has a bill coming forward that would enable the contracting out of water for 35 years. That issue has been discussed up and down the country and it was certainly discussed in Auckland where I come from. Although I think we reached an agreement in the select committee on new section 147A I would like to have an assurance from the Minister in the chair that the proposal from Rodney Hide will not affect that new section. We worked hard in the select committee to try to clarify that issue and in fact the Greens were very very keen on that. We reached an agreement on it and I know that Jeanette Fitzsimons who was on the committee at the time was very very keen that we certainly had that sorted out. 
I also note that we have amendments to the Electricity Act. We had a very interesting debate in the House earlier tonight during the second reading of the Electricity Industry Bill about electricity generation. There are a lot of questions around that issue. 
Clause 30 inserts new section 24A “Criteria for setting reasonable conditions” in the Electricity Act where again we go back to the word “reasonable”. Again I ask the Minister in the chair to tell us what he considers “reasonable” to mean. There is some detail in the bill about that but we are considering a very very important question given that we seem to have one rule for utility operators on the one hand and another rule for workers in other legislation on the other hand. 
If I may—and without getting on to the Gas Act—I would like to talk about the amendments being made to the Railways Act. Again it was a very interesting discussion during the select committee process because there was quite a lot of conflict between railway corridor operators and utility operators. The utility operators seemed to believe that KiwiRail and ONTRACK were deliberately blocking access to their land. 
I thought that a very very important point came through to do with safety issues in rail and to do with workers’ safety and particularly to do with the safety of the public. I had a lot of conversations although I cannot remember whether the railway union came and talked to us. The previous speaker may remember. Certainly people from KiwiRail came and talked about the importance of workers’ safety. 
I have to put on record my concern about railways workers’ safety under the 90-day fire-at-will bill. I ask which workers on the railways would raise a safety issue under the provisions that they have because their jobs would be on the line. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The amendments to the Railways Act 2005 are important and I am absolutely pleased about those. 
Paul Quinn 
: Darien what bill are we on? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: I am talking about clause 38 in Part 2 if the member would like to get out his copy of the bill and read it. It talks about the amendments being made to the Railways Act. In fact if that member had been on the select committee then he would know that safety was one of the very very important considerations that we talked about but he probably still would not have listened or taken any notice. I am raising an issue of deep concern to members on this side of the Chamber about the safety not only of the public but also of workers under these provisions and under other proposed provisions of this Government. Thank you.