Woodhouse Michael: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Woodhouse Michael: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12507] 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a quick call on Part 2 of the Infrastructure Bill particularly on the issues that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee discussed in Part 2. I want to touch a bit on the rewrite of history that Moana Mackey went through in terms of getting the cart before the horse—the drafting of the code before the bill was drafted—and the fact that some of the corridor providers have dropped out. In fact that is why the bill has come into existence. 
The goal of having a voluntary code between corridor managers and utility providers has been the target for a long time now. After many years of trying utility operators and corridor managers have failed to agree on a voluntary code. That puts us in a bit of an interesting situation because we are being asked to legislate for that which the industry could not come up with by itself. I think the select committee members would agree that when we heard submissions there was a kind of Mexican stand-off going on between the corridor managers and the utilities providers. I think the Local Government New Zealand submission was the most revealing about how difficult that had been. 
Local Government New Zealand did a couple of things. It described some of the authorities around the country that have come up with their own voluntary codes and have achieved agreement with utilities providers. But that becomes very difficult for utilities providers that are nationwide—telecommunications providers and so on. They are forced to try to comply with a plethora of voluntary codes and that has become very difficult. I think the gold standard the goal within a regulatory framework is to come up with a code that everybody can sign up to. Once this bill is passed the Minister will have the legislative power to bang heads together to make the code work. But as we know that will be very difficult unless those organisations come willingly. I hope that that is the case. 
It was also evident in Local Government New Zealand’s submission that it wanted us to keep everything it agreed with in the code but put things that became quite tense into law. That would have become very messy and it was not the select committee’s recommendation. As-built drawings were one of the examples it came up with. It has had constant problems trying to get as-built drawings out of utilities operators but the code as it is drafted makes it very clear that coming up with accurate as-built drawings is a requirement that cannot be contracted out of. It is not just utilities providers; anybody who has been in the construction industry or has been a client of a building project knows that as-built drawings take forever to come and are often the last thing that gets ticked off in any construction project. 
There was quite a bit of discussion about the issue of amenity values and the causer-pays principle. For the benefit of the Labour spokesperson on transport the real issue was a belief by utilities providers that as a condition of access to the corridors local councils often burden them with the cost of maintaining or improving the amenity and that that is disproportionate to the disruption being caused. The bill clarifies that it is causer pays as long as there is no expectation by the local council to improve the amenity or to somehow make a better visual amenity—for example taking away cabinets or putting lines that were previously overhead underground. Having considered hither and to the issues around amenities values the select committee was quite comfortable that the bill as it was drafted with a couple of amendments covered the issue of access and amenity values pretty well. 
We also considered the issue of lining up the notice periods which were different in the respective Acts—the Telecommunications Act and the Gas Act. We now have a bill that will be quite consistent in terms of the expectations to provide notice of access. I think that was a really good improvement to Part 2 as well. 
This bill is about reducing red tape but it is actually about orange tape. It is the orange tape and the orange cones that the public see every day with transport infrastructure changes that seem to be constant. Local Government New Zealand said that there were 8000 separate applications for access to corridors in the Auckland area alone and not all of them were well coordinated so I hope that that improves.