Curran Clare: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Curran Clare: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8718. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I would just like to point out to the hysterical member across the House who spoke before me John Banks that David Shearer earned that money himself that he did not get handed it in a brown paper bag and that he volunteered the information of his own volition. He did not get “found out” and he did not break the law unlike that member. 
There is another debacle on this Government’s doorstep—another debacle of its own making. This was the one that was going to be the step change in our economy: Steven Joyce and John Key’s ill-thought-out ultra-fast broadband scheme and Chorus’ inability to deliver it. It is developing into a giant stuff-up. It is a huge political risk to this Government and it knows it. It is a classic case of overpromising and under-delivering. It is think big without the think; it is mismanagement and shonky deals. You take $1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money you give most of it to a private company Chorus that has a majority of foreign shareholders and you promise that you will have most of New Zealand signed up to your whiz-bang ultra-fast broadband scheme within 10 years. Then you get to year 5—year 5—and so far just 3806 households have signed up. That is 0.28 percent. The Government is going to have to work hard to get them all signed up because so far it has laid fibre to only just past 8 percent of households and it is worried. Fibre has been laid to quite a few schools but are they using it? No. And why are they not using it? Well they tell me it is because there is nothing to use it for and they will have to pay the increased data costs out of their already stretched operations budgets—budgets stretched by sorting out Novopay a debacle of the highest order also being faced by this Government. That is another giant stuff-up. So its very fast broadband scheme is very slow to take off. That is one big problem for it. 
The other very big problem is that this Government wants to interfere in the price that we pay for our existing broadband—interfere in a way that borders on corruption and at the very least is contempt. The Commerce Commission thinks the price that we pay on the existing copper network should drop. It said so just before Christmas. It came out with a decision because that is its job. But the Prime Minister did not like its decision. The Government threatened to change the law. Why? Because Chorus complained to the Government. Why? Because if the price of your monthly broadband and phone on the copper network is lower than the prices on the Government’s new fibre network then people will not sign up to it. They will not sign up to the new broadband scheme. It is the Prime Minister’s own fault. It is the Government’s fault. It negotiated the contract. It wrote the very law 2 years ago so the Government is threatening to change its own law that it passed 2 years ago to manipulate things. And who is going to win? Well it will not be the consumer. It will be Chorus a private company and its overseas shareholders. 
Ross Patterson the former Telecommunications Commissioner for the Commerce Commission described it as “unprecedented”. These people hardly ever speak out in public but he did. He said the Government had crossed the line of political interference. Sound familiar? Think Skycity deals. Think $43 million loans to MediaWorks. Think the change of law to suit Warner Bros in making  
The Hobbit 
. Think the conflicted role of Stephen McElrea the Prime Minister’s own electorate chairman who is on the board of New Zealand on Air. And think the Prime Minister’s knowledge of and involvement in the illegal surveillance of Kim Dotcom by the Government Communications Security Bureau and the FBI. An unfolding story—an unfolding story. This Government will do what it likes. It will abuse the law it will abuse the contract processes and if it does not like the law it will either ignore it or change it and then it will pretend it cannot remember or that it does not really matter. 
And there is more. Chorus is now telling us that it is going to cost at least another $300 million more than its contract to lay fibre. It has got its hand out and who is going to end up paying for it? It will be the good old taxpayer will it not because John Key and Steven Joyce are looking after their mates and they have stuffed up. They have stuffed up big time possibly even bigger than Novopay and who is going to bear the cost? It will be the consumer. But it will not work because changing the terms of Chorus’ contract to prop up its flawed scheme will be crossing too many lines—