Bond RiaRIA BOND (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and take this third reading call on the Telecommunications (Property Access and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First in the first reading supported this bill to the select committee stage and that was because of the concerns we had primarily with things like property access—access to multiple properties driveways and shared dwellings—and the issues that members of our community were actually facing when trying to get connectivity to ultra-fast broadband or fibre. What this bill actually tried to do in that initial process was to address those matters which is why we did say we would support it to the select committee. We could definitely on merit see that this bill would do that and we wanted to tease it out through the select committee process to ensure that these concerns were not only brought to us from submitters but also discussed in an open forum through that process.I have to say that in previous calls in the first reading second reading and Committee stage the time this bill took in the background in order to get here in the House had been touched on by various members. It has been said that it took some 4 years and due to the fact that internet connectivity and IT provisions within this country are growing so rapidly I also wanted to point out that it did take its time to get here but we are pleased that it is finally here. I do want to say that we had 54 submissions come through the Commerce Committee and we heard 14 submitters. In that process—and I have said this before—we had mums and dads we had farmers we had New Zealand councils from right round the country and we had Federated Farmers. We also had a submitter whom Clare Curran spoke to in the Committee stage Ewan who spoke about the fact that he wanted the committee to insert a new section that would allow the fibre-optic cabling to be sitting alongside the power lines. With that kind of communication and dialogue that was quite open with the committee we found that it made common sense to look at that and to discuss it in more depth.What we also received in one of those submissions was actually a submission from Northpower which shared with us that it had been working with the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment for over 12 months and trying to look at the option of having legislation changes to allow the fibre cable to sit within pre-existing infrastructure that was currently owned by them. The fish-hook in there came in the areas of private land ownership—so like the rural areas and farmland. It became apparent that Federated Farmers and Northpower needed to sit down around a table and consult each other about those issues that Federated Farmers had brought through to Northpower and the concerns of those farmers. We were quite happy that the information and the support and communications that came back from Northpower was that they had indeed reached an amicable decision about this.One of the submitters who rang in further supported this by saying that he was OK with Northpower to provide 200 metres to the breakout point. He was quite happy and some other fellow farmers were actually quite happy too to personally pay for the other 300 metres from the breakout point to their dwellings. So what was seen as potentially quite a big issue became quite small in comparison when we looked at the economic improvements that our rural area could actually have. I also spoke about the digital divide between our urban and rural areas and I spoke about the fact that this bill particularly with the amendments and also the Supplementary Order Paper 280 that the Minister for Communications introduced was actually going to be quite good for the urban and rural areas. I want to touch on some of the issues that some people in my area in Southland have had. I relayed back to the Dennis brothers who are identities within the racing industry—when I visited their farm and looked through their issues one of the things that one of the brothers said to me was: How crazy is it that we can't even bet on our own horses when we're not at the track—on our property." That property is 7½ minutes from Invercargill's city centre. So I know that the Dennis brothers—if you are watching this today you will be quite happy with the fact that this bill is going through.I also want to talk about the fact that I met with Rural Women New Zealand and some of the concerns there were about the fact that a lot of the women were actually doing a lot of the paperwork on behalf of the farm and they had issues with connectivity or being unable to upload their data on to their software systems. It was a huge problem for them. I want to say that this bill will now address that problem too. But also actually another area in the rural area with women was the fact that a lot of them had start-up businesses from home. These were entrepreneurial women who found it absolutely not OK that they could not get connectivity so they were unable to provide a foolproof service to their customers. I know that I am quite happy—with all the amendments and the changes that the select committee has worked really hard on along with our policy advisers—that this bill is now actually going to be fit for purpose.I would like to talk about that Supplementary Order Paper 208 just a little bit more. When it came to me at half past 10 on Tuesday morning last week I took the time to go through it and look at all the recommendations that actually were further amending what the Commerce Committee had actually provided. I did say at the time that this was quite small—that it looked at little glitches and technical drafting issues. Although it was quite a big Supplementary Order Paper it also made sense to actually further improve the bill so that members on both sides of the House could put through legislation so that it was actually fit for purpose it was actually going to meet the intent of what the bill was necessary for and it was going to fix the issues that we have had all around New Zealand and that we have heard from our submitters when we went through the select committee process.On that note I would like to say that New Zealand First does support this bill. We support the fact that it is a sound bill and we look forward to its passage through the House."