Hughes Darren: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12495] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 I ask you to indulge me Mr Chairman just briefly to say how nice it is to see the Hon Tau Henare in the Chamber this evening as part of the Committee. If I link it back to the Infrastructure Bill I know he has had some changes to his own infrastructure lately and I know he has 21st century equipment now in that respect. It is quite genuinely good to see him. On this side of the Chamber we will be ensuring his continued recovery by encouraging him not to interject quite as thoroughly and aggressively as he normally does. We will be doing that out of aroha for him not out of any sense of trying to shut him down politically. I was concerned at various parts of his recovery when I felt that some of his Facebook status updates were getting a little too edgy politically and I thought he should be focused on his recovery. But it is great to see him here looking so well so we extend that to Mr Henare tonight. 
We are debating the Infrastructure Bill 2 years after the election of the National-led Government. This is a Government that came into office saying that it was determined to lead a “step change” in the New Zealand economy and that it was determined to in fact “turbocharge” the New Zealand economy and infrastructure would be one of the ways in which it sought to do that. 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: That’s right. We’re doing that. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Mrs te Heuheu says that is absolutely what the Government was trying to do but the only thing she has been able to turbocharge is the Pacific Economic Development Agency. She sure built up its infrastructure until things got a little bit difficult for her in that particular respect. 
This bill has been languishing on the Order Paper. Once it is split through Supplementary Order Paper 152 later this evening Part 1 will form the new Utilities Access Bill. The largest chunk of the Infrastructure Bill is here in Part 1. It troubles the Opposition considerably that what was meant to be a key part of the Government’s economic programme has sat around for 2 years of this Government’s term with absolutely nothing happening about it. 
The new infrastructure portfolio was created for Minister English after the election as part no doubt of some sort of power struggle with the Hon Steven Joyce. Mr English insisted on an extra portfolio and that is fair enough as he has been burnt often enough in politics to know that it is important to cover one’s bases. When the Minister for Infrastructure speaks maybe he could tell us why this portfolio was set up. He has had to introduce only one piece of legislation as a result of picking up this portfolio. This bill is it. Two years later we are stuck in the Committee stage on this bill. 
We would be very interested to hear from the Minister to what extent this bill is a priority. We are debating it on a day in which the Government has backed down on what was in just February a centrepiece of its economic policy: mining of schedule 4 lands in precious conservation areas of New Zealand. That policy was so important that it was in the Prime Minister’s annual statement to Parliament but today of course it has been completely abandoned halfway through the year the statement was meant to apply to. We would like to know just how critical this is seen to be. It appears to me that that back-down was a political back-down and not a back-down of principle or a change of decision or philosophy by the Government. I believe that it still believes those areas should be mined but it has backed away from it on the basis of its political imperatives and the changing political environment. There does not appear to be a lot left to hang the turbocharging of the economy on. The Infrastructure Bill is stuck well into the second year of the Government’s term and the mining proposal has been mined in the opposite direction. 
To the Minister’s great credit he always opposed the cycleway. The Minister for Infrastructure always knew the cycleway was a complete joke—he knows how to recognise such things—and he never lent any meaningful support to it. Of course nothing in this bill covers the cycleway at all but that should not come as a surprise to anyone. 
As we open up the debate on the part by part consideration of this bill we want to know from the Minister for Infrastructure just how important this bill is to the Government. In the 2 years it has been dithering on this bill turning it into legislation what significant items of infrastructure development in New Zealand have been stopped or stymied because this legislation was not present? If the Minister could tell us that it would give us some sense of the urgency of this bill. Goodness knows the House has been put into enough bouts of urgency since the election but on not one occasion was the Infrastructure Bill part of those motions. That is despite I have to say the Labour Opposition offering to facilitate that bill through its stages in urgency. 
We support this bill with the exception of Part 4 which my colleague Moana Mackey will go through when we get to it. For Parts 1 2 and 3 there is bipartisan support for this bill because we can see what some of the issues have been with inefficiencies and uncertainties. So we are interested to hear from the Minister why the bill has taken so long to get to this point.