Barker Rick: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Barker Rick: Telecommunications (TSO Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19477] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I will pick up a couple of points on Part 1—in particular I will raise with the Minister in the chair the Minister for Communications and Information Technology the very serious constitutional issue raised by the Hon David Parker. I think that very often we take these matters lightly particularly people who hold a ministerial warrant and are busy people who want to get things done. I understand that the Minister in the chair wants to get things done but there are constitutional processes in place to ensure that the public are not subject to a legislative and parliamentary bushwhack. I fear that that is what is being imposed upon the public here today. It is clear that Supplementary Order Paper 247 has a significant amendment in it. It is a significant amendment that has not gone to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. There has been no opportunity for the public to get involved. I think that the Minister has a duty and an obligation—a debt—to the public of New Zealand to explain why he has chosen to circumvent the select committee process. 
The Minister also has an obligation to explain clearly to the public what the consequences of this amendment will be and to explain clearly to the public why it was impossible for him to go to the select committee and allow this Supplementary Order Paper to have transparency scrutiny and submissions. One of the fundamentals of our parliamentary representative democracy is transparency. Others are accountability and the ability of the public to participate in these debates. But all of those principles have been offended by the process that National has embarked upon here. That is significant. If there were urgent public reasons for this process there would be no problem. Everybody agrees that the process has to be flexible to enable things to happen quickly but on those occasions the Minister in the chair explains the reasons for it and the justification for taking that speedy process. However on this occasion we have not heard that. 
The other worry the public should have is that the Kiwi share obligation was put in there for good reason. It was to protect the public against the predations of a monopolistic Telecom. The Kiwi share was an obligation and a burden upon Telecom one that it has jibbed against shrugged against and done everything it could to get it off its back. Why was it a burden? It was a burden because it was a protection for ordinary New Zealanders. Now we are seeing that protection taken away. So one person’s burden will be another person’s benefit. If Telecom is getting rid of a burden we have to ask ourselves the question of what the benefits to be forgone are. 
I would have expected that a responsible Minister who was supportive of transparent and open democratic processes and who was supportive of transparency would clearly explain to this Parliament the reasons for this. The Minister would have got up and said “This is imperative because—”. The Minister would also have got up and said “The consequences of this are going to be a b c d e f and g”—whatever it was—and explained that to the public. Instead in this Supplementary Order Paper we have a small explanation in the explanatory note at the back: “These amendments are to reflect that the KSO will not be operative following the structural separation of Telecom:”. Well I have to say to this Committee that it would take a very very knowledgeable person to figure that out. It would take someone who had an incredible amount of industry knowledge to understand the implications of that. 
In my view the Minister has a responsibility to explain to this Committee what he is doing. The Minister gets his power as a Minister from this Parliament and he is accountable to this Parliament. I say to the Minister that he is in dereliction of his duties as a Minister and as a representative of the people of New Zealand. He has failed to explain to them the consequences of these amendments. There are many people whose phone lines are supported by the Kiwi share obligation. They do not know it and they do not appreciate it; they just pick up their phones. But that is how it should be. They should be able to believe that Parliament will look after their interests. On this particular occasion their interests are being jeopardised and Parliament has not heard the reasons for that. I say to the Minister that he is adding to New Zealand’s reputation as being the Wild West of legislatures.