Curran Clare: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3714. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well Minister Amy Adams came into the House and she delivered her first speech on this bill. She said that this was not a tax she said that prices would not go up and she said that it was a mere extension to a levy. So what happened within 40 minutes? Prices were announced to be going up by one of the major telecommunications companies. It called it a tax and said that it was unfair and that there had been no consultation. And in the most important part of the release that it sent out it said: “We are exploring options for adding this cost in a transparent way to our customers’ monthly statements so they understand the contribution that they are making to the Government’s Telecommunications Development Levy fund.” Well if that is not a demonstration of a new tax being imposed then I do not know what is.All I can say is that this Government said it would introduce no new taxes but it has. This is the latest one and it is going to go on everybody’s phone and internet bills every month because this Minister has not done her work. She has not consulted properly with the industry. She has not done an evaluation of the original rural broadband scheme. There is no evidence that it has been successful despite what she gets up and says. InternetNZ which came before the select committee yesterday said that we could expect more petitions from communities around New Zealand that have very bad broadband speeds and are desperate to try to change that and that there was no evidence that had been provided. The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment told us the same thing. It said that there was no analysis of the economic outputs or the benefits because it has not been done and all we are hearing is that it is money that is being spent on rural New Zealand but it could be going down a big black hole. Here we are committing another $150 million from an industry levy that is directly being passed on to consumers—[Interruption] Oh the Minister scoffed at me when I said that. But what happened? It is being directly passed on to consumers.Hon Bill English: Scoffs at you no matter what you say.CLARE CURRAN: Mr English an extra dollar a month on every consumer’s phone and internet bills is a direct result of a piece of legislation that is going through under urgency. That is a result. Whether it is a good result or a bad result is another matter. I call it a bad result but it is a result that is going to put an extra dollar—so you give $25 and you take away $1. The Government has introduced three new taxes during this Budget. I would say that the Government and Amy Adams have got egg on their face—egg on their face. I would also say to the National MPs who are in the House right now and who live in rural electorates that they would know that they are having—particularly Stuart Smith in Kaikōura and Barbara Kuriger who are two that I know of who are having steady streams of constituents coming in from rural New Zealand saying that the quality of their broadband is inadequate and please do something about it. I would imagine that there are many other rural MPs who are saying the same. Well I say to them that this legislation which commits $150 million of a levy on industry being directly passed on to consumers is not going to make it better because the first scheme has not been evaluated. There is no evidence that said it has worked.In fact the information that we are getting is saying that it absolutely has not. And let me give you some examples. There has been a road trip undertaken by a group that calls itself Hills Holes and Poles which is a project that is part funded by InternetNZ and has been touring the country over the last few months in rural and regional New Zealand looking at the quality of broadband experience that people are having. What it is finding is that for many rural Kiwis broadband remains frustratingly out of reach or unaffordable which is despite successive Government policies including the Rural Broadband Initiative. What they are finding is communities are instead doing it for themselves. They are not using the rural broadband scheme. They are coming up with community initiatives with local wireless providers with trusts and with providers to actually form their own community wireless schemes. They are doing in some of the communities really well.But this is not Amy Adam’s initiative; this is not what she gets up and trumpets in the House. There are dozens and dozens of them and more are happening but they are doing it themselves. What Labour would have done would be to support them to do it themselves better and faster. Instead we are having a Government imposed levy that will be passed on to consumers—Dr David Clark: A tax.CLARE CURRAN: —a tax which is not going to deliver and that is the great tragedy of this. Even the ministry involved acknowledges that the work has not been done and that there has been no evaluation. It cannot be evaluated. Therefore it cannot be decided whether or not it is a good idea to invest the extra $150 million. Actually the most innovative rural broadband is happening as I said in communities around New Zealand and there is one happening in mid-Canterbury which is ironically right next to the Minister’s electorate. Maybe she should go and visit that. One of the problems with the telecommunications development levy which is highlighted in the regulatory impact statement is the expectation by the major payers that the funds will in large part be recycled back through them.I note that the Green Party has introduced two Supplementary Order Papers that we the Labour Party will be pleased to support during the progress of this bill through the Committee stage. We will be keen to debate those Supplementary Order Papers and what the impacts are because one of the issues that lies behind the lack of evaluation and the lack of economic analysis in this legislation is knowing whether or not the recycling of funds back into the big players such as Vodafone and Chorus has actually in effect ended up being a subsidy to those players and has enabled them to entrench their status out in rural New Zealand. I am not making that assertion in the House tonight but I am asking the question and the problem is that we do not have the answers because we have not been able to have the analysis about this very matter and that is a great shame.Another example of what communities are doing for themselves is in Marlborough. The Marlborough District Council has just managed a survey and 700 people have responded to its online survey on connectivity which is a very high response for a community. As I understand it is four times the number of people who have engaged in the long-term district planning process which indicates that there is a high degree of interest out there in rural New Zealand. I challenge any of the National Party MPs who have got parts of their constituencies that are rural to tell the House that they do not have people coming into their offices on a constant basis or writing to them about the state of their rural broadband. Colmar Brunton has done a survey. They have come up with the figure of 68 percent of rural businesses and households in New Zealand that are angry and frustrated about the state of their broadband. After nearly 5 years of the first scheme you would think that things would be better than that and now the Government is introducing another $150 million for a failed scheme.