Donnelly Brian: Communications Legislation Bill — First Reading 
Donnelly Brian: Communications Legislation Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3005] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 As the Minister of Communications said in his introduction this is a very narrow bill. In fact the challenge is to try to spend 10 minutes talking about it. That probably explains why the contribution from Clayton Cosgrove I think did not refer at all to any of the elements in the bill. In fact it was not until the last minute of his speech that he actually mentioned the name of this Communications Legislation Bill. I thought he was talking about something else and was in general debate mode. 
Nevertheless I have to commend Maurice Williamson for his contribution. It is true that Maurice has a better understanding of the physics surrounding this particular issue than possibly anybody else in the House and he has the elegance of language to be able to explain it very clearly. I just wish he would explain to his colleague Tau Henare that 2 plus 3 does not make 6 as Tau tried to argue last night in the House. Maurice is one of those people who are fascinated by the physics involved. I totally believe that before he goes to bed each night he tries to solve Faraday’s differential equations as well as spending some time tweaking his dipole. 
New Zealand First although it will not have a member on the select committee will be supporting this bill and we are very very pleased to see that National will as well. We will have a lot of confidence if Maurice is a member of the select committee the bill will go to. I have worked in select committees with him and he is a very very good member in that particular role. He certainly works assiduously at the detail and because of his knowledge of physics he will make a tremendous contribution to the details within this. 
Dr Ashraf Choudhary 
: This bill is not one of Maurice Williamson’s. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: No but I am making some nice comments just so Maurice goes away from the House today feeling good about himself. 
I refer now to some of the details of the bill. It rolls over a number of controls that were already in existence and were due to expire in December 2006. It rolls over regulation on 10 out of the 13 services largely because the Commerce Commission possibly will not be able to fulfil the work it has to do by that time. This seems to be very very sensible and it is also very sensible that the other three services which are the national toll-free telephone number portability service Telecom’s fixed public switched telephone network to mobile carrier pre-selection service and the co-location of equipment for fixed telecommunication services at sites used by BCL are not being rolled over. Good justification has been made by the commission as to why none of those things actually need to be rolled over. Certainly there are satisfactory explanations for that. 
The part of the bill that caught our interest to make sure we knew exactly what we were talking about is the issue around band expanders. We well know that the band on many of the Japanese used vehicles coming into the country in increased numbers is not big enough to pick up a wide range of radio frequencies here in New Zealand so people install band expanders. As the Minister pointed out some of them are not up to New Zealand standards and therefore do not get one or two frequencies in certain areas—in fact I think it happens in only one area of the country. That should not be a reason for that part of the spectrum not to be able to be used. We think this is a sensible modification to overcome some of the unintended consequences of the existing legislation. 
 The bill also clarifies that the maximum duration of a radio spectrum management right is 20 years from its commencement date. Once again we think that move is sensible. Also we think it is sensible to include a limited ability to aggregate management rights in time in order to simplify the management of the radio spectrum. 
To that end New Zealand First will be voting in favour of this particular bill. We hope that the select committee which we are not represented on—but we do have confidence in some of its members—will look at the details to ensure that they are right so that the bill can proceed through to its final reading.