Mallard Trevor: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:16071] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 More and more of these speeches sound like valedictory speeches. It is like those members have given up. They want to run away. They want to go home. They do not have the courage of their convictions and they are not prepared to stand up for what they believe in. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: Order! 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: “Courage of convictions” is allowed. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: OK I will watch the member. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: “We don’t have the courage of our convictions.” is what members opposite say. They are not prepared to stand up in this House and say what they believe and to speak from the heart. They read half a page of research unit notes. 
Chris Hipkins 
: It’s not even half a page; it’s a couple of sentences. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: He is a faster reader than Paul Quinn but that is not saying a hell of a lot. But there is no conviction on their part whatsoever. 
It was a marginal call. We will support the Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill to the select committee but with severe reservations. I think it is fair to say that some of us are worried about how close our spokesperson on communications Clare Curran is getting to Mr Joyce and the fact that he has somehow convinced her to let this bill go to the select committee. 
Lynne Pillay 
: Three minutes he talked tonight—3 minutes. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Was it 3 minutes? That is quite a long one for him. I am told that is quite a contribution on the part of Mr Joyce. 
The Government is clearly struggling in this area. It was one of National’s biggest pre-election promises in 2008. An amount of $1.5 billion has been sitting— 
Hon Member 
: And it’s coming. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well it is coming and it was coming the Christmas before last. This Christmas is coming but the Government was meant to be making progress on this area before Christmas of 2008. It is now Christmas 2010 and not a single centimetre of extra cable has gone down. Not even a millimetre of broadband fibre has been laid as a result of the Government policy since that time. The Government said it would progress it by Christmas and we all believed it. It was Christmas 2008 when John Key made that promise. But like so many things—like so many things—this is a case of broken promise after broken promise and John Key has made no progress at all. 
It is fair to say that I have some time for some of the people who are involved in the Crown Fibre Holdings board. Some of them I think have some real integrity. But they have been dealt a dog in the regulatory area by this Government. The regulatory forbearance period outlined in this bill basically gives whoever wins the Ultra-fast Broadband Initiative and the Rural Broadband Initiative a 10-year holiday from price regulation. It is absolutely outrageous when we know that in this area prices come down down and down. What will we have? We will have a Crown-anointed monopoly that is allowed to keep its prices up and to strangle the public in this area. 
Clare Curran 
: It’s a dribble. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I do not really understand why it is a dribble but I do not think even the broadband is dribbling out. The Commerce Commission—[ 
Interruption 
] Melissa Lee is finally apologising. She is saying she is sorry for her performance in Mt Albert. We forgive her. We found her entertaining; we thought she was great. 
Chris Hipkins 
: She can come and stand against me. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I do not want her to come and stand against me. I would prefer to have Paul Quinn standing against me rather than Melissa Lee because he got 1 out of 10. I think Melissa Lee got 2 out of 10. Did she get 2? 
Jonathan Young 
: Come on get back to the broadband Trevor—it’s very interesting. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I will be interested in Paul Quinn’s speech because I do not think he knows about the broadband that is available out in Hutt South—he does not visit it often enough. I think he uses the jungle drums when he is trying to communicate with Hutt South from Roseneath rather than the broadband that Hutt South— 
Hon Member 
: Like this. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: He might go like that a bit but if he did that a little bit better and if he was 2 inches taller he would have been an All Black. Everyone knows that if Paul Quinn was 2 inches taller or even had broadband he might have been an All Black. If he had some fibres that connected in the neurology area he might have been an All Black. I am not sure whether this legislation will help him at all. 
Some of us are pretty unhappy with the way that the Minister for Communications and Information Technology has kept on changing the goalposts in respect of ultra-fast broadband. It has been seen to be unfair—and a number of the people who have been involved have felt it has been very unfair—that the Minister has kept on changing the rules mid-process. People have been coming into a tender process going out of a tender process and coming into a tender process again on the basis of some very unclear arrangements. I appreciate the Minister’s position. He does not know the extent of the involvement of Telecom. He does not know the way that that will work. He does not know whether there will be full separation. And I do not blame Telecom for taking so long in this particular area. 
I am sure the Finance and Expenditure Committee—I assume the bill will go to a select committee—will get the Commerce Commission in and hear from the commission about its concerns. I know there is a lot of anxiety in the industry around the taxation arrangements and the possible tax advantages that will go to Telecom and around whether that is fair or unfair as things change. 
An area of a lot of concern is the Minister’s apparent nonchalance about what is ethical and what is not ethical in this area such as the arrangements where one of the directors is acting as a consultant to the suppliers of one of the bidders for the Ultra-fast Broadband Initiative. Venn’s son—what is his name—Jonathan Young might shake his head and say it is nothing to worry about but I think there is something to worry about if someone who was involved in making the decisions is also involved and has a relationship with the people who will be supplying the equipment to the people who win those decisions. I think there is an inherent conflict in that situation and I do not think it is a recoverable position. I do not think it can be isolated and I am quite concerned about that arrangement. 
I will go back to where I started. I find the lack of progress almost incredible. I find it almost incredible that a Minister could make so little progress in an area over a 2-year period. I think it is fair to say that. I now apologise to Clare Curran because she indicated to me that she thought the Minister would not make much progress and I said he was one of National’s brightest Ministers. I said he was a bright new shining boy; he knows quite a lot about the communications area; he has been involved in the radio industry; and he had more oomph than anyone on their front bench. I thought that if anyone in National could get it sorted then Steven Joyce could. I thought he would have sorted it by now and I thought he would have made a lot more progress than this. I defer to my colleague Clare Curran who warned me that she thought he was not capable of doing the job. In fact some of her worst fears are coming true. 
Broadband is the way of the future. Our exports will be weightless. The stuff that goes up and down this fibre network will be the future of this country. To have the sorts of essentially Third World arrangements we have—both in rural areas and in most of our cities where we are way way behind many of the countries we are competing with—is an indictment on the Minister. We have made almost no progress in this time and it is likely to be 6 months before this area is progressed.