Cunliffe David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3699. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I rise to take a call on the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill which is being rushed through the House during Budget urgency setting aside the normal processes of Parliament—to have a select committee hearing and a report back from stakeholders.Why is this happening? I can only imagine the picture in the Cabinet room when this legislation was mooted and there was Nathan Guy bright as a button poking his eager little eyes up above the Cabinet table and realising that this sounded like free broadband for farmers. How wonderful! The Minister for agriculture could announce—Hon Nathan Guy: No; primary industries.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Primary industries. He wants a bigger title. It happens in the third term of a Government. The Minister for Primary Industries—not primary schools but primary industries—wanted to be able to say in a press release “Free broadband for farmers.” National is the farmer’s friend. But nobody told him—David Bennett: Who’s your friend? You’ve got no friends.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Oh there is another farmer. He is still alive David Bennett. I have not heard from him for months and months but he is still alive. He moves—proof of life! But nobody told Nathan Guy PhD that if they impose a levy on telecommunications companies which is a new tax it will simply be passed on to consumers and in the end the farmers will pay. I can see the look on his face now. The camera can zoom in on the crease in his brow as he realises that it ain’t as good as it sounded.What is the ostensible purpose of this bill? It is supposedly to fix things call black spots. That is when you are driving through the country and your mobile phone drops out.David Bennett: The Labour Party.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Well we are law-abiding citizens. We do not often use mobile phones when we are driving and if we do—which is a rare exception—we always have them on hands-free.But there is a thing about Northland. Occasionally members of Parliament were in Northland for the by-election. There was a traffic jam as ministerial LTDs BMWs were backed up trying to get into Northland on their shabby rural roads and it suddenly dawned on Ministers that you cannot actually use a mobile phone through most of Northland because there is almost no coverage at all even on the main road. So you can imagine their haste as they scampered back to Wellington and realised that Simon Bridges was a bridge too far and that the good people of Northland would not be fooled by umpty-dumpty years of neglect followed by 10 bridges in 10 days but they could tell the difference between that and a regional development strategy and there was a black spot all over Northland. So this bill got rushed through.This is yet another example of the National Party hitting the policy panic button. [Interruption] “Who cares?” says the member at the back. I cannot remember his name but he sometimes speaks in the House. He says “Who cares?”. Who cares whether it is good policy? Who cares whether it is a good investment of taxpayers’ money because it was a bloody good press release? It sounded really good on the news and that is all that matters right? Postmodernism got the narrative right. Who gives a toss about the facts? That is the Government for you in its third term. Here is the issue. Have you heard of Google’s Project Loon? Have you heard about that? Do you know what Project Loon is? What is it? He is nodding.Brett Hudson: Balloons my friend.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Very good you get a starter for 1.Project Loon is a new way of getting broadband to the rural regions by a mesh network of balloons that can broadcast and that way you do not need expensive lines in the ground or on power poles. It may or may not work at scale around the world but the point is this: before you go spending another $150 million of New Zealanders’ hard-earned cash you had better look at things like that.Brett Hudson: You’ll wait for years. Mr Cunliffe suggests you wait for years. Let rural New Zealand suffer for years he says.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: There are two ways I say to the noisy backbencher on the far side that that can happen. The first is a thing called a regulatory impact statement that tests a whole bunch of options. But the department here in its disclosure has said that it really did not have time for any options analysis because this was a panic-button measure as my colleague Clare Curran has pointed out. So there goes option one.Option two is to have a select committee process and hear from the industry: hear from Vodafone Chorus Spark 2degrees—hear from the experts—about how they think they can get the most broadband possible to the most people possible in rural New Zealand at the least possible cost. Oops—the Government did not do that either. That is why we are here on the dead of Friday passing this legislation through all stages under urgency which denies the sector and the public the opportunity to comment. Why on earth would you do that when you are spending $150 million? I will tell you what: the industry is hopping mad. The Government may be the farmers’ friend but it is certainly not the friend of the telecommunications companies right now because they know it is a muddle waiting to get worse—a muddle waiting to get worse let alone that it is a broken promise—David Bennett: Sounds like the Labour Party.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —let alone that members like Mr Bennett could not give a toss about the facts—they are interested only in the media—and let alone the fact that this measure has not been justified in terms of evidence or a select committee process. This is bad lawmaking and it is a bad process.The broadband obligation that is contained in this bill will be passed on to consumers. There is no such thing as a free lunch. A telecommunications levy can be levied on the phone company but of course it will pass it through and it will be Mr Guy’s farmers whom he will have to face when their phone bills and their broadband bills go up because nobody has done the analysis to find the cheapest way to get them the bandwidth. But let us just assume that all of those problems were not there. Let us just assume that the Government had done its homework it had done options analysis it was having a select committee process it had consulted the industry the industry was onside and that consumers were going to get a good deal. Just assume for a moment that was all true.Ah—the other big problem every time the Government goes near broadband telecommunications is that nobody hooks up. The Government set an objective of 80 percent coverage for its ultra-fast broadband. Well nobody was ultra-fast to hook up to the thing. The last time I looked there was about 3 percent usage. Three percent of New Zealanders have actually ponied up the connection costs to hook themselves to the so-called ultra-fast broadband network and that was in the cities where it was easy. Spend another $150 million of taxpayers’ money with no select committee process no data analysis and no consultation with the sector and guess what is likely to happen—sweet nothing because people cannot see the reason to spend $2000 or $3000 of their hard-earned savings to hook up to a system that may or may not work. That is why there has been a knock-on effect through the sector from this Government’s incompetence.Here is the sad story although it is mainly about urban not rural areas but it is relevant. Chorus pressed the panic button. It rang up Steven Joyce and his sidekick Amy Adams and said: “Hell we’re going to go bankrupt because you put us over a barrel with the ultra-fast broadband roll-out costs. It looked OK but as nobody is actually joining up and no one is using it we are losing money. Please write us a big fat cheque.” or words to that effect. So what did the Government do? The so-called economic managers who are zero for seven on running a surplus said: “Sure.” They rang up Mark Ratcliffe and said: “Mark how big a cheque do you want?”. He said: “Oh well look it’ll look better if you just let us renegotiate our ultra-fast broadband contracts.” So they did. Chorus shares rose faster than just about any other share on the stock market last year because the deal that it got out of this brain-dead Government was just so sweet that they were rolling in shareholders’ funds and the Government got duped.Well here we are again. The Government has obviously learnt from its mistakes because it would never again spend taxpayers’ money without consulting the sector or having a rigorous select committee process. Oops—except here we are on a Friday passing this $150 million new tax through all stages without a select committee hearing. Can New Zealanders see the problem with this process? Well I will tell you what—the telecommunications company sector can see the problem and even Nathan Guy’s favourite farmers will when they pick up the bill. Mr Guy’s smiling face as he lifts himself up to the Cabinet table will not be smiling quite so much. Thank you.