Beaumont Carol: Infrastructure Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Beaumont Carol: Infrastructure Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:9814. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak in support of the Infrastructure Bill but I do not support the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. It seems to us that we may have the opportunity to deal separately with Part 4 of the bill which repeals that Act and that would be very good. 
I am delighted to have heard the contribution of my colleague Tau Henare. That was fantastic. It is great that he has seen the error of his ways and taken on board Labour’s view; that is “for the many not the few”. I expect to see him joining us on this side. That is just wonderful to see. 
I will talk about the submission process because I along with others in the House was one of the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which dealt with the Infrastructure Bill. We received and considered 37 submissions from interested groups and individuals and of those we heard 14 submissions. Generally they were quite technical submissions from various authorities that deal with the infrastructure area—planners engineers and the like. We received advice from Treasury the Ministry of Economic Development the Ministry of Transport and the Housing New Zealand Corporation. I would like to take the time to acknowledge those officials for their assistance in working through this bill. It was a reasonably complicated bill to deal with because it addresses a number of Acts. The Infrastructure Bill tries to pull those together. 
As members are aware the bill was reported back in November last year. Gee what a lot has happened since then! We have seen the accident compensation scheme gutted—and that is just the start according to the Minister. We have seen a rise in GST signalled. We have seen the third Auckland governance bill—and I will come back to that because as my colleague Darien Fenton said that legislation overlaps very strongly with what we are trying to do with this Infrastructure Bill. Most recently we have heard about mining in sensitive areas—those areas protected under schedule 4 of the Conservation Act including the Coromandel and Great Barrier Island. So a lot has happened since the Infrastructure Bill was reported back to the House. 
The submissions led to a number of changes being made to the bill. As the Minister said some of those are quite technical and some are substantive. I will address some of those changes as I go through. The bill effectively provides for a new Utilities Access Act and makes a number of amendments to several Acts to remove a number of legislative barriers to infrastructure development. I say that infrastructure development is ultimately still about people. We are looking at transport corridors—moving people or moving freight to get it to where people need it to be in order to provide the sorts of jobs and an economy that will support and sustain New Zealanders. The bill has four parts that cover three main areas. Part 1 deals with changes to arrangements for utilities access to transport corridors which as I learnt in hearing all the submissions is a very important mechanism for ensuring that we can upgrade and maintain our utilities. Those transport corridors are fundamentally important because they provide the opportunity to upgrade without having to damage residential or industrial infrastructure that is already in place. Part 2 deals with changes to the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act 1981 and Part 3 repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008. I will come back to the latter one but as I have already said Labour opposes that repeal. 
This bill allows the Minister to approve a code of practice for processes relating to access to road rail and motorway corridors. The changes to the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act are about aligning that corporation’s governance arrangements with equivalent provisions in the Crown Entities Act 2004. I will come back as I said specifically to the affordable housing legislation. 
In relation to utilities access I note that this work was begun under the previous Labour Government and indeed was considered by Cabinet in 2007. It was because there had been inconsistent application of “reasonable conditions” being put on utility operators like electricity telecommunications water sewerage drains and gas operators when they were seeking to exercise their right of access to roads and so on. Local authorities generally as road-controlling organisations say there has been poor-quality reinstatement of roads by utility operators and concerns about inconsistencies between statutes thereby creating advantages for some operators over others. The bill in part seeks to make the legislation consistent for all utilities and provides a legislative process to give legal status to a stakeholder-created code for utilities companies for managing access to roads motorways and rail corridors. I want to explain that inconsistencies include notification requirements prior to work commencing the allocation of costs when installations are moved and the criteria for setting reasonable conditions on the works by those with jurisdiction over the transport corridor whether that be a local authority the New Zealand Transport Agency or Railways Corporation. 
Those inconsistencies can play out very badly for local communities. I will give members an example from a community I am working in. This is from the  
Onehunga Community News 
 of July 2009 which is a very good monthly publication. It keeps a really close handle on what is going on locally. The Onehunga Business Association manager Amanda Kinzett was quoted talking about work that was happening on Princes Street in Onehunga—which coincidentally is where my office is located. She talks about being taken unawares on a particular Friday evening in April when she saw roadworks taking place on Princes Street when there had been no notification of the work to be carried out. After some phone calls she discovered that Fulton Hogan was resurfacing the road. That was OK; fair enough. A number of delays led to the roadworks commencing on 11 May. The job was due to take 3 days but due to inclement weather that was not the case. Interestingly enough “In a turn of events which in its way is fortuitous a Vector employee”—this is where it gets interesting everybody—“was driving past the works noticed the upheaval and recollected”—went “ding!”—“that Vector was due to carry out work in the area. This work was brought forward which delayed the resurfacing another couple of weeks but did avoid the road being resurfaced and then having holes dug in it. Apparently”—and this is the bit that relates to the Infrastructure Bill—“Auckland City is supposed to have a system whereby this type of work is notified to avoid for example roads being dug up by successive contractors. It appears that this system has its faults. As we go to press”—in July last year—“the work has taken six weeks”—not 3 days—“capped off with two burst water mains and a burst gas main.” This bill is about trying to stop some of those things happening by ensuring that the code of practice requires notification by utilities operators to each other. It means for example—and this is one of the bill’s provisions that will be changed as a result of the select committee’s work—that the code will require coordination of work between utilities operators including how utilities operators deal with corridor managers as well as other utilities operators. That was illustrated by my Princes Street example where we had gas water electricity and roading all through that one street in Onehunga. So we are certainly supportive of that change. Clearly those sorts of situations are not acceptable. They caused considerable loss to businesses in Princes Street and are just unacceptable in a modern society that is trying to improve infrastructure. 
I am aware that I am running out of time but I want to just talk briefly about the implications of changes to Auckland’s governance. Unfortunately although this bill puts in place many good provisions around infrastructure because we will be facing a super-city with authority taken away from elected representatives and in the hands of corporate bodies effectively—so-called council-controlled organisations—I think we will see a number of major problems with infrastructure. Everybody from businesses right through to community organisations for example is opposing the new transport agency and clearly they are key players. I will leave it there. Thank you very much.