Mackey Moana: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to stand and speak to Part 2 of the Infrastructure Bill. I think it is important to reiterate that this work started under the Labour Government. We are 2 years into the National Government’s term and still passing Labour legislation. That is all right we prefer to pass more Labour legislation and a little bit less National legislation if possible so we will not complain about that. 
Part 2 is incredibly important because access to the transport corridor varies so greatly. It varies greatly across different local government jurisdictions. It varies greatly across all the different statutes and of course as time has gone on we have ended up in a situation whereby communities that were previously not connected to reticulated water and waste water are now connected so that infrastructure has stretched out further and further. It is affecting more and more communities. Once upon a time electricity infrastructure was the only infrastructure that went out to a lot of these communities; now there is so much more. We have broadband infrastructure apparently according to the Government. We do not know whether we will see it. When we do see it it will probably go only to people’s streets not to their houses. That seems to be a waste of infrastructure. I certainly hope that that will not be the case. But if we are going to extend and add more and more infrastructure it makes sense to start to regulate and try to bring together in a coherent way access to that infrastructure. 
One of the big issues has been the difference in treatment for different utility operators. That has created a large amount of tension. It is not tension that is necessarily going to be legislated away by this bill although I do think that this legislation will be a good start in trying to bring some consistency to that. But the fact is that when we have so many different local authorities all doing different things for a single organisation for example that has to work with every single local authority across every single statute that relates to infrastructure we can imagine how difficult that becomes. 
I will mention because no one has mentioned this yet the impact on the public of this legislation. One of the things that really annoys the public is when they drive down a road that is being dug up because something like a water main is being replaced and 6 weeks later they drive down exactly the same piece of road and it is being dug up for something completely different. 
David Bennett 
: That doesn’t happen now. It only happened under you. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh David Bennett and his usual excellent contribution to the House! I will not bother to even repeat it; it is not worth it. If he was listening to what I was saying he would know that I was pointing out that one of the things that I hope this legislation will result in is a far more coherent approach to when this work is being done. If all infrastructure operators know that a certain piece of road or rail corridor is going to be open for work that traffic will be diverted and that the road will be dug up then they know that if they have maintenance work that needs to be done on electricity or broadband infrastructure it makes sense and it is cheaper to do it at exactly the same time. That reduces the amount of time when the public is being inconvenienced by major works being carried out. 
This seems relatively simple but of course none of this has been brought together before because none of these organisations were able to work with each other effectively in this way; because of a lack of coherence that has not been happening. I think that sometimes when we deal with legislation that is very technical like this bill we forget the public in that process. When it comes to the development and the maintenance of infrastructure the public are an incredibly important part of that. Part of the reason we have ended up in a situation where local authorities are resistant to allowing access to a corridor is because they come under enormous public pressure from their voters who say to them that they are sick and tired of their roads constantly being dug up for no reason. So they start to put more stringent requirements on those utility operators. 
Utility operators have to be able to get in. They have to be able to do the maintenance work because if they do not do that it is far more expensive in the long term. But when they are constantly up against a city council that is having to try to pull together all of these groups that has to try to deal with utility operators that are working in a huge number of different local government areas and under a huge number of different rules and regulations that is where the public start to be left out of the equation. It is where we start to see the public being disadvantaged far more than they need to be. That issue is not something that many people have talked about but resolving it would be a very good outcome from this legislation—a very very good outcome.