McKelvie Ian; Williams PotoIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): This'll be a bit of a test—thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Whether the last speaker Gareth Hughes knew what he was talking about or not I'm not sure but he certainly convinced me and I thank him for his contribution because I think it was a pretty good effort at summing up this legislation. It's a pleasure for me to take a call on the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill in the second reading. I noted earlier the praise of the Minister for picking up this thing at such short notice. Well he's had a lot more notice than I have and he had a much better speechwriter than I've got but none the less I'll do my best.Interestingly both Gareth Hughes and Tracey Martin touched on a subject that I want to mention a little later my contribution. This is an immensely complicated and challenging topic for New Zealand. The sector changes so quickly and I think we've seen that in the last nine years with dramatic change in the way services are provided the way we can access all this sort of thing—telecommunications and the like—and it certainly is a challenging task to regulate this in a manner that's sustainable going forward. I want to talk about that a little bit later as well.I find this whole area quite challenging and I think it's a really interesting area to get involved in. I myself live three kilometres from State Highway 1 have a copper network—it goes past my house. I have two fibre lines that go past my house—both Ministry of Defence lines which we can't access. Interestingly my phone doesn't work and nor does my internet and because it's so slow I don't bother with it as you can probably tell. That's one of the challenges we have in rural New Zealand. The issue that I want to raise which partly Tracey Martin touched on and so did Gareth Hughes is that we can with all the best intentions put this sort of legislation in place and often it's the unknown that catches us and it's the unknown that trips up rural and isolated New Zealand. I guess I got very nervous when I heard Gareth Hughes talking about the electricity industry and the legislation around that because in fact that's a good example of where we have to some extent tripped up in rural New Zealand as a result of legislation passed in the 1990s. So we can put this legislation in place with the best intention but what the outcome of that will be in some parts of New Zealand is comparatively unknown. While I don't have a great understanding of this I do think there's always that unknown risk. I suppose I'm only saying that because I want to say in a few years' time if it does come to pass I told you so."I want to touch on new Part 2AA in clause 7 which is a new part that was put in place to deal with some of the challenges I'm talking about. It effectively gives the Commerce Commission responsibility for declaring which geographical areas become specified fibre areas where fibre fixed-line access services are available to end-users. The challenge with that is that this kind of legislation is all very well but I don't know whether we always account for what goes on in our communities. That's actually a hugely important thing for rural New Zealand particularly for provincial New Zealand really because the advent of these extraordinary telecommunications systems and connectivity is massively important for our ability to diversify in provincial and rural New Zealand. It not only enables our farming communities to diversify extensively and to use technologies that you wouldn't have dreamt about some years ago but it also enables people to live in those areas and operate businesses from those areas that would have been unheard of some years ago. So it's hugely important that we have regulation in place and legislation in place that enables those services to continue to be provided and to be provided in a manner that is useful to those communities. I think that that's the key factor we've got to deal with.I was interested to note that this bill sets a date for this to be implemented—1 January 2020—but it provides for the Minister to delay it by up to two years if the commissioner requests it. How they decide whether it's necessary to delay that or not I don't know. That's I guess the challenge that I think I'm talking about because I do think that there are some significant challenges in this stuff and we have seen it with the electricity sector in rural provincial New Zealand. We've also seen it with this sector itself in rural provincial New Zealand as we've struggled to get connectivity. To be fair it's very expensive to get both the electricity and connectivity into some of those areas that I'm talking about but none the less they are places that we want people to live and we must enable them to live in those places. So I think that's an important factor. We will never know whether we're right or wrong actually but it is an interesting factor and one that I think is very important for the future. So as I said I can support the piece I understand about this bill but it's what we don't understand that I think is as I said the important factor for us.The other thing that this kind of connectivity and the provision of these services into the more remote parts of New Zealand does is enable us because of the access provided by this type of thing to use things that we would have never dreamt of particularly with respect to the environmental challenges we face in all parts of rural New Zealand the forestry challenges we face and even things like mapping. I guess when you get to carbon credits which are also a little bit telecommunications—a bit complicated for me—it enables us to measure that kind of thing remotely and very easily. Of course satellites do that too. It also enables the users of those services to access that information very quickly. So whilst this bill for me is pretty complicated I think that it's certainly necessary. It's difficult to understand whether we have it right or not but it's something that as a sector we must—from a Government perspective or from a Parliament perspective—put in place.I just want to comment briefly on the Ministers that have been involved in the time that I've been around this institution: firstly Amy Adams who did a lot of work on this sector; followed by our leader Simon Bridges who also put a lot of work into this sector—and actually both of them had to face quite a lot of flak from those rural MPs among us who are pestered by constituents for the lack of service on frequent occasions. They were followed of course by the past two Ministers who dealt with this including Clare Curran. A lot of work has been put into it a lot of thought has been put into it and no doubt a lot of work by the offices has been put into this and I hope that from that perspective it works.I was very interested in the comments around the health aspects of this because it's certainly not something that I would ever think about a lot but I guess that people of my generation didn't think about those sorts of things a lot anyway. We certainly weren't intimidated by what the stuff going through the air might do to you; it was more what smoke and things like that might do to us that was intimidating but certainly not the stuff that was going in your ear and coming out the other end. So I was fascinated by that discussion.I probably don't have a lot more useful contribution to make to this but I do want to just reinforce the—Dan Bidois: Keep going. Come on—you're doing a great job.IAN McKELVIE: Shh! I don't want you to listen either! I just want to reinforce the fact that I think that it's the unknowns of these pieces of legislation that always challenge us in the future and in my experience from a rural New Zealand perspective it's almost always the rural sector that is challenged the most by what wasn't foreseen at the time legislation was put in place.So that's my contribution to this bill. It's not an area I have a lot of expertise in but none the less I have a great deal of pleasure in supporting it as it progresses through the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call; Dr Deborah Russell."