Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity to speak this evening on the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill. I was on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee that considered this bill. We did so over quite a number of weeks under the able chairmanship of Jonathan Young and with a number of subject matter experts I'd say including the likes of Gareth Hughes from the Green Party who was able to impart a lot of wisdom into our discussions and I appreciate his input into that. I was fully intending to stand up tonight and talk about how I guess peace had broken out on this bill because it is a very good bill—the telecommunications bill. Most of the work on the bill was done by the previous National Government under Ministers like Amy Adams and so at its heart it is a very good piece of legislation. But I unfortunately can't and the reason for that is—I wouldn't say it was quite the eleventh hour but near the eleventh hour we received Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 118. The Supplementary Order Paper—and for the people watching at home I'm not sure if you can see—is actually larger than the bill. The bill itself is 77 pages. The SOP is 95 pages so it's a very substantial SOP that's been put forward by the Government. The concern I have around that is process because we received 257 submissions on the bill. All were very well considered. We received submissions from a range of organisations like the telecommunications industry a number of law firms and also interested individuals and at no point have they been able to provide feedback on this 95-page Supplementary Order Paper that's been put forward. Now it's fair to say that some of the issues that those submitters raised have been brought up in this SOP but nowhere is there now the opportunity for them to provide feedback on this SOP at all. So it's my contention that this bill should actually be returned back to the select committee to allow us to go through the SOP and consider the amendments that the Government's put forward because at the moment there is no democratic oversight—apart from a short truncated process in this committee—for those to be considered. There are some quite substantial changes that the Government's recommended. I want to refer to some changes referred to in inserting a new section 232A into clause 33 which refers to a Commission 111 contact code" and it outlines a number of new requirements around a 111 emergency service. My colleague Ian McKelvie has spoken about this earlier in the debate and I thought it was a very worthwhile contribution from a rural MP. I myself have got a large number of rural constituents as well. I think it's fair to say that they'd like the opportunity to have some feedback on this provision as well because we're all concerned in this House to ensure that there is the availability of the 111 system and emergency services to people in rural areas but the problem with this is that it's been brought forward at the eleventh hour with no possibility for people to contribute on it. It's fair to say that we did grapple with this issue during the select committee process. It was raised by a number of submitters and their concern was that they'd be essentially cut off with the new technologies that do emerge. It's fair to say that we should be embracing innovation where possible and making sure that we do make use of new technologies as they come along but this was a fundamental concern that submitters did have that people in rural areas would be cut off from the service. So in some sense it's good to see that the Government's listened to that and brought forward an SOP to make those changes but again there is no possibility for members of the people to submit. The other aspect which came up quite a lot during the select committee process was around health issues and this was something again that the committee grappled with. We brought the Ministry of Health in to discuss it because there was concern from people—again particularly in rural areas—that with the rise of ultra-fast broadband and radio waves their health would be impacted by that. So those issues haven't really been addressed in this SOP but nor did we expect them to be. We did ask for some advice from the Ministry of Health and we had them come in. We felt we were satisfied by the advice that they gave us that there were no additional concerns that they had in relation to the increased radio waves and the effect on health from that. But it's fair to say we do have our concerns with the process. We do support the bill overall. The SOP does make some worthwhile changes but there are some things that the select committee should have been able to consider. Unfortunately we weren't able to do that. It's been introduced at a very late stage in the process. It's much longer than the bill itself and I think that unfortunately leaves a real democratic hole when it comes to this bill and the opportunity for this House and our Parliament to consider it."