Clendon David: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Clendon David: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:16073] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take what I would normally consider to be a short call on the Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill but in comparison with some of the offerings I have heard this evening it might be a relatively long monologue. The Government one would imagine has quite a lot riding on this bill; it is one of the major planks of its election campaign a couple of years ago. It is one of the major infrastructure investments that the Government believes will turn round our economy make this a better place and provide all sorts of useful services. 
Government members in the House tonight seem to have remarkably little to say about the bill. One would expect a degree of commitment a degree of confidence and—dare I say it—even some pride in this legislation. That does not seem to be coming through this evening. That fact has been observed not only in this House but also in some social media that I saw earlier this evening before I came into the House. There were some comments on air to the effect that people were wondering why the Government was so reluctant to advance some robust arguments in support of its own legislation. One commentator suggested that perhaps Government members just did not have much to say but others noted that that has not stopped them from speaking at length on previous occasions. 
I will talk about the benefits proposed in this legislation. The Greens will support this bill going to the Finance and Expenditure Committee albeit with major reservations and of course reserving the right to withdraw that support if we do not see some needed changes to this bill. We recognise the considerable benefits of fast and ultra-fast broadband and those benefits are well known both locally and internationally. There are considerable advantages for businesses to establish this facility this infrastructure. I know from my own experience in my former life as a business adviser on sustainability that the ability to communicate not only with voice but also through images is a significant advantage. I worked in a number of large companies who invested quite heavily in videoconferencing equipment which not only reduced their operating cost but saved time for their employees and reduced their carbon footprint considerably. It enabled them to have high-quality communications to do business over the wires rather than requiring people to travel around the country. There is a clear advantage to that and ultra-fast broadband will facilitate that. 
This infrastructure will enable people to choose particular lifestyles and conceivably take pressure off our urban centres to the extent that people using this infrastructure could choose to live in rural environments and still have the instant communication advantages of living in the city. For that reason I think it is not a bad thing that some of the initial roll-outs will be in the smaller provincial and rural areas because that is desirable on many levels. 
This infrastructure will be a very valuable educative tool that will put students in our rural schools as well as in our urban schools within very easy reach of information. It will enable the sort of initiative we saw recently where a virtual conference was held in New Zealand. This academic conference engaged people from around the country and was conducted for the most part as a virtual conference. 
There are major advantages in this sort of technology and for that reason the Greens will lend this bill our qualified support at this point. 
We must recall however that this technology like every other is not a panacea; it is a technology and it is a tool. We have this unfortunate habit of allowing our technological capability to run in advance of our social adjustments. We often invest heavily in research into technology and invest rather too little into our sociology of place and of community. Faster communication is not necessarily always better communication. It is important that we maintain awareness and continue to research and think very hard about the social and cultural consequences of new technologies in our haste to adopt them and to adapt them. We ought not to lose sight of the larger picture or the reality that these sorts of technologies do affect social change as well as provide tools for business for education and for standard forms of communication. 
In essence this bill sets out the path for the Government’s roll-out of ultra-fast broadband and its rural broadband initiative and it makes changes to the telecommunications service obligations. On the surface it is a reasonably complicated document. It is almost perhaps overly complex one would think but much of the bill is about working out who pays what and when and in what circumstances. A great deal of the bill focuses on pricing: who will pay and how prices will be managed and regulated and therein lies some of the rub with this bill. 
This legislation gives new power to the Telecommunications Commissioner. 
The explanatory note says that future amendments to the legislation may be needed to facilitate the breakup of Telecom if that company should win or win in part the tender to roll out the ultra-fast broadband initiative. The provision to substantially alter the bill in the event that Telecom does win some part of the tender means that to some extent we may be heading into unknown territory. There is a degree of scepticism and concern. Arguments will have to be made at the select committee that that is an appropriate course of action and we will need to be careful to iron out and attend to all the possible ramifications of that. 
The matter of the regulatory holiday the 9 or 10-year relief from regulation if you like has been mentioned already. It has been commented on at some length in the interested media; Computerworld InternetNZ and Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand among others have all had comments to make and there are some very real and very serious concerns within that community of interest. The information and communications technology community knows and understands this issue best and can think through the consequences of getting it wrong. 
Debate interrupted.