Curran Clare: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Curran Clare: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19485] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on Part 1A of the Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and signal that Labour is putting up three amendments to this part. I will briefly speak on them; I hope to get a call on each of them because they are all very significant. The first amendment in respect of clauses 23B(3) 23C and 23H addresses the issue of ministerial responsibility and the ability of the Minister for Communications and Information Technology to take control of Telecom’s structural separation arrangements on his own without redress to public consultation or a requirement to take advice on those structural arrangements. Instead the bill as it stands allows the Minister to essentially make his own decisions and make up his mind without recourse to anybody. That is not much of a surprise when we think of the modus operandi of this Minister in making decisions generally. It is the “Trust me I know what I’m doing” approach and any criticism is irrelevant. So that is a fairly significant amendment. 
The second amendment that Labour is putting up to Part 1A is to clause 23ZE. It is on the significant issue of what happens when Telecom structurally separates and what happens to the proceedings that have already been brought against Telecom and proceedings that may be brought against Telecom between now and the structural separation. Nothing in the bill guarantees that parties that take legal proceedings against Telecom for any breach of the current operational separation during this enforceable period will be able to have those proceedings seen through after this legislation is passed. Given as my colleague Trevor Mallard raised the sheer amount of breaches and anti-competitive behaviour for which Telecom has been held to account in recent years this is a significant issue. There is an investigation into a breach currently under way and there is no guarantee under this legislation that that investigation can be seen through to its conclusion. So that amendment is quite important as well. 
The third amendment to Part 1A amends clause 23G. Again as my colleague Trevor Mallard highlighted when he mistakenly thought that Part 1A was Part 1 this amendment amends the maximum penalty for breaching a number of provisions on the approved asset allocation plan and the conditions of the plan and it takes the penalty up to a significant penalty not exceeding $100 million rather than not exceeding $10 million. There are some very good reasons for that and no doubt more of my colleagues will address those issues as we go through Part 1A. Some of those reasons include the sheer number of breaches that have been made by Telecom the stakes that are involved in the sheer amount of taxpayers’ money that has been put into the broadband scheme and the fact that Telecom has been handed a monopoly by this Government in rolling out this fibre scheme with very few controls with many of the arrangements being undertaken through contractual arrangements and with little or no public scrutiny. The Commerce Commission is being held at arm’s length and held away from regulation in this area and many of those issues will not be able to be addressed until 2019. The public is not being guaranteed that they will be getting fibre delivered to their homes until as late as 2019 and perhaps even later. So there are a number of issues that should require Telecom when it breaches process under this arrangement to feel the financial pain of not meeting the obligations it is supposed to meet.