Shaw James: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3767. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Green): What is in a name? That which we call a rose would by any other name smell as sweet. Is it a levy? Is it a tax? Actually who cares? Has Bill English broken his “no new taxes” promise? Well he put up GST he put up the petrol tax he has introduced an airport levy he is introducing a capital gains tax he has cut the paper boy rebate and he has put a tax on private jets—it does not actually matter whether he says he was not going to introduce any more taxes. He has extended and introduced new taxes left right and centre—in fact literally left right and centre if you think about the political spectrum. It just does not matter.The relevant question is: what do we do about paying for the continuation of the Rural Broadband Initiative and for these black spots? Earlier on in the debate I was trying to work out what the different objections were and what the questions were about. I just want to acknowledge again the Minister for having taken a call and responded to some of those questions. I just want to reflect back on some of those.The first question was in relation to the press release from Spark about passing on prices. The Minister said that it cannot be justified as that would be double-charging consumers because it is already contained in the price. The Telecommunications Carriers Forum has a different view. It said that actually the industry has been absorbing those costs rather than passing them on and so it would be new for the industry to pass them on. It is kind of unclear which of those views is correct. It becomes quite difficult and I can fully appreciate why the Labour Party would like to have a proper select committee process so that we can get to the bottom of that.The second question was about the quality of the connection and whether the money that has been spent so far—the $300 million that has been spent so far—was a good use of the money and whether it was producing the results. I am afraid that we did not get a good answer on that question; nor did we get a good answer—or in fact any answer—about the issue of evaluation and reporting on the effectiveness of the existing Rural Broadband Initiative. Tracey Martin raised the question of why it is up to the Greens and New Zealand First to do the Government’s job for it. There are a bunch of questions here and a Government bill about the quality of the spend. Where was the Government’s response? We are not getting a response to a number of these questions.There was a related question that was about new technologies. Mr Cunliffe spoke very eloquently about that and again I do not feel that that was addressed. We did have a question about whether companies would get two bites of the cherry. We received an unequivocal answer from the Minister on that that they would not and I am very pleased to hear it. That was the point of one of our Supplementary Order Papers and so we feel that that has been answered and I appreciate that from the Minister.We also asked why this legislation needs to be passed under urgency. Again the Minister responded directly to that saying that we cannot start negotiating and there is such urgency to roll out the whole programme that we cannot wait for the full legislative process to go through this. I empathise with the Government’s sense of urgency. As I said in my first or second reading speech having travelled around the country over the last 10 weeks in the rural areas in particular the digital divide is exacerbating an existing social educational and economic divide. We have real urgency to get this out there which is why the Green Party is inclined to support this bill even though we would normally not support bills being progressed under urgency because of the lack of scrutiny that goes with passing legislation under urgency.We asked a related question that was around why we are doing this now—seeking funding while the policy design is being consulted upon. Again I think that relates to the sense of urgency so we were satisfied with that answer from the Minister. The question about competition—and this was another Labour Party concern that I do not feel was sufficiently addressed—was whether small companies and a broader range of companies will be able to participate in the programme or whether it is just going to be the established players. So that one is still kind of up in the air. The ninth question was around what the Minister’s response was to the two Supplementary Order Papers put forward but I feel that that was answered as well.So some questions were answered; some were not. We are left actually with some discomfort about voting for this bill because there were a number of the key issues we feel the Government did not actually bother to try to answer.We also had the question of whether the legislation is constitutional so it has been quite a surreal night. Who would have thought that a telecommunications funding bill would have involved the regent of Belgium and other constitutional arrangements? And there was the question of the Royal assent which took up close to an hour and was sort of a fascinating piece that we got into on this bill. It has been quite a strange legislative process tonight. Strange enough as I have said because I felt like New Zealand First and the Green Party were kind of doing the Government’s work for it because we were not getting answers to those entirely valid questions that the Labour Party was raising.We will be voting for this bill but we are disappointed that some of those questions have not been answered including some of the really substantive questions about the quality of the spend of the money so far and the possibility that we would be throwing good money after bad here. I did want to gently remind the Labour Party which stood on principle tonight on the matter of urgency and said that it could not support such a weak legislative process that only a couple of months ago it supported the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill through the urgency process. This piece of legislation was passed not only without any of the normal legislative processes but it contained algebra that no one in the House could actually comprehend. At least we have some idea of what this bill will actually result in which is the raising of $50 million a year for the next 3 years. That is actually a pretty simple proposition. That is easy enough to argue about but the MPs’ remuneration bill contained a formula that literally no one knew what they were passing as they were passing it.It has been a fascinating evening. We will be supporting this piece of legislation because we do believe that the programme needs to continue with a great deal of urgency but we do have some discomfort and we will be looking to the Government to answer those questions that it did not bother to answer tonight. Thank you.