Williamson Maurice: Communications Legislation Bill — First Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Communications Legislation Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:2999] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I rise to speak for the National Party. I make it clear from the outset that we will most certainly support the bill going to the select committee and unless there are small modifications to it probably support it going right through the whole process. 
But I raise first of all an issue of process. One of the things I find interesting about this bill is that it seeks to extend the expiry date of some of the regulated services by another 2 years so that the Commerce Commission can consider those services and report to the Minister of Communications. I have to ask the Minister David Cunliffe outright—in fact I have to ask the whole House—what the point is. We have a regime at present whereby there is a dedicated person called the Telecommunications Commissioner. The commissioner Douglas Webb beavered away for as long as he did and used all the resources he could use—because there were a lot of meetings research and consultation—then he made a recommendation on the unbundling issue which was not to unbundle. The Government of the day accepted his recommendation. Nothing has changed in terms of any of the commissioner’s recommendations to the Government yet suddenly one day out of the blue from a leaked Budget paper we found that the Government is going to completely ignore the commissioner. 
 I actually think there is no problem with Ministers making the decision. I think that Ministers are elected and Governments are there to make hard calls and tough decisions. But I say to the member that I find it absolutely unconscionable that we spend the level of public money we do on a Telecommunications Commissioner’s office and all the resources that go with it and say that we want the very best possible advice we can get from the commissioner then when the Government finally gets that advice it says that actually there will be some political consequences unless it does something different so it announces that it will unbundle the local loop anyway. Douglas Webb’s office should just be closed down and he should be given another job—maybe he could become a decoy cop or do any of the other jobs that are going at present. It is a silly thing to have that office. 
It is a little bit like the issue we had with the Minister of Conservation and Whitianga Waterways. The case went right through all the process—through courts and environment courts—then the Minister said that he did not care what the courts had said and that he would override them. Well let us cut out the middleman and just have the Minister make the decisions. We should forget about needing to extend services for another 2 years while we wait for the Commerce Commission to report. Why do we not just ask the Minister what he will do because it might be that the Minister will completely ignore the commission’s report. 
Having said that I think it is worthwhile to canvass the two parts of this bill—the amendments to the Telecommunications Act which basically give the extension of time and more important some of the stuff around the Radiocommunications Act. I have to say as a member of Parliament—probably the only member I think in this House although I might be wrong—who can solve Faraday’s differential equations governing the propagation of the electromagnetic spectrum— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: What a sad member! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Well I understand it if other people have more interesting things to do at night-time. We will not canvass Mr Cosgrove’s nocturnal activities here. I often go home at night and solve Faraday’s differential equations under the duvet because I find them quite elegant and exciting. But I think the electromagnetic spectrum is probably the most misunderstood issue and this bill will play around with some of the rights and licensing. 
I will let members know some interesting points about the electromagnetic spectrum. It used to be that there was really only one part of the spectrum—the short wave long wave and microwave part. As the years have gone by and technology has got smarter and smarter we have found new ways to use it. The spectrum is actually in the same part of the world; it is in the ether the atmosphere and it travels through whether there is air there or it is outer space or whatever else. It is just the frequency at which the electromagnetic signal beats. If it beats at quite a low level it can start off down in the chunk we call the AM band and as it gets faster it can go into the VHF band. Halfway through the VHF band it locks into a space and in that space is the FM band. Then there is the VHF second band up—VHF means “very high frequency” and it is called that because everyone thought that that was about as high as it could get. But then we moved into UHF which is ultra-high frequency and now we are up into the gigahertz parts of the spectrum where it beats thousands and millions of times a second. 
I want members to hear this analogy because I hope it puts this in perspective. The chairman of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva gave a speech a few years ago and said that if all of the spectrum that is currently utilised in the world could be represented by a sheet of A4 paper then the spectrum that is not yet used but that one day will be would reach past the sun. I think that puts into perspective how much further we can go—to the trigahertz then to the gigatrigahertz and the gazilliontrigahertz and so on of frequency. We cannot do that at present because we do not have the devices or the microchips that are smart enough and capable of using the spectrum. So if members think that a Radiocommunications Act is a thing that is passed once and then it is all over I tell them that we will need a regular tranche of radiocommunications amendment bills to address issues along the way. 
One of the most important issues that needs to be dealt with—and this bill goes some way to doing it—is that of interference. Again a lot of people do not understand it. Let us consider Lake Taupo on a lovely smooth glassy day. If someone down at the southern end of Lake Taupo by Tauranga-Taupo and someone up at the township end each dropped a pebble in the lake then the little circles that emanated out from the pebbles would not touch each other—actually they would but so slightly that it could not be measured. However if those people each dropped a very large boulder in the lake only about a kilometre away from each other the outgoing circles would hit each other and form a whole series of diversion patterns. That is one of the serious problems that goes on in this country all the time. Clayton Cosgrove is sitting there completely flummoxed by all of this. After he left standard 4 he never studied any of this stuff but I can tell him— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: That’s not fair! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Is that not fair? Well the best 5 years of his life were in standard 5. I will tell the member about the situation we have now. If a new radio station starts up and is on a particular frequency—let us say it is on a 702 kilohertz band in Auckland—it may be that a radio station in Hamilton is on the same frequency and there may be interference. But the interference may be about an integral number of harmonics. It is interesting how much of the sign wave of a harmonic we can get interference from. It happens regularly. Members of this House may not know it but a new radio station will start up and within days there will be a complaint from someone in an unexpected area who says that something has happened to his or her reception and that it has gone very fuzzy and hazy. Then we get into some of the rules about who has first right to that frequency. As this bill makes clear somebody might already own the licence and not be using it. Someone else might own another licence and be using it and when the person who has the first licence starts up an operation he or she will want to claim incumbency rights. But the person who has been broadcasting to customers for some years might think that he or she has incumbency rights. This bill goes part of the way to addressing that issue. 
The bill will define what new spectrum licences are and give very specific limits. The duration of a new radio spectrum licence will be 20 years. It will clarify and refine the disputes resolution process—again I refer to the two boulders falling into the lake and the interference. I know that Clayton Cosgrove is totally flummoxed by this; I might draw him some little diagrams later of the boulders and the lake. We might say to a radio station that we will let it stay on a frequency but that it will have to tweak its dipole. It would have to broadcast at a certain number of watts or kilowatts but only into say an elliptical area in one direction and with none of its frequency being broadcast back behind that area or into a basin in another direction or wherever because that is where the interference goes. Let me tell people that a lot of broadcasters—radio and television stations—hate being told that because they say they have customers there. The disputes resolution can become really nasty. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: What’s it called—a dipod? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I am talking about tweaking the dipole—a dipole is the little unit that carries out the transmission of the device. There are all these contour graphs—again another concept the member will be struggling with—that show which area the frequency covers and at what power. As I pointed out the real issue is that a lot of people will say that they have been broadcasting somewhere and that now we are taking away their rights. So this legislation goes to address that matter. 
As I said at the beginning of my speech the bill addresses the issue of a number of those telecommunications services that are currently regulated and about which the Commerce Commission says it cannot complete its investigations into those services within the 5-year time frame. The fact that the commission cannot do that should send shivers down people’s spine to start with. The commission will receive a 2-year extension but I would like the Minister if he takes a right of reply call at the end of this debate to tell us whether he will accept the recommendations of the Commerce Commission this time or whether he will just say that he does not care what the commission says because he will override it anyway—in which case there is no point in having such a commission.