Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Mr Deputy Speaker first of all I want to acknowledge you. Lots of people have. I want to do that acknowledgment with respect and I acknowledge all of the members who are leaving this House. This is likely to be my last speech in the 51st Parliament of New Zealand and I want to talk about the future.I want to say to the member Ian McKelvie who just sat down and to the Government—and I am really pleased that I made it back to speak on this bill—that I wonder what Julius Vogel would have had to say tonight about the last contribution and what I see to be an apology to New Zealand for really an underwhelming piece of legislation or the spirit that lies behind this. Labour is supporting this—absolutely we are supporting this—piece of legislation to the select committee but in the next Parliament of New Zealand let us hope that we can have some vision true vision that we can put behind this because this represents the next really important piece of infrastructure that has to take our country forward. Not just parts of our country I say to National; all of our country. All of it is as important as the rest. Rural is as important as urban. How about that?The infrastructure that Julius Vogel stood for when he conceived the railways of New Zealand was about getting a means of transport out through and across our country. Every utility is about that and I am afraid that we have not got there yet.This bill represents a 2-year consultation process. It has been an important piece of consultation. This is an important piece of legislation in that it looks at a regulatory framework for fibre and copper from 2020 and that is an important piece of work that this Government has overseen. However this Government has focused on getting needed ICT infrastructure built but it has assumed—it has made a huge assumption—that if it puts in place a mechanism to get infrastructure built in part of our country businesses will make good decisions about technology and that has not happened in the recent past.The reason that I wanted to talk about the future is that—and I notice that a number of speakers have talked about Netflix they have talked about Facebook and they have talked about various means of using technology. This is actually about New Zealand's economic future. It is absolutely about New Zealand's economic future. That is what the point of putting a new piece of infrastructure out into New Zealand is all about. But what this Government has not done is it has not been the advocate it has not been the researcher and it has not been the business operator in the sectors where it is directly involved. So therefore in terms of thinking about how the digital economy can drive our country forward into the future it has been focused on delivering infrastructure into part of New Zealand but not all of New Zealand and is not about how it can help all of the businesses all of the parts of our economy and all of the sectors to make the best use of that. That is the thing that is missing right now in our economy.At the macro level New Zealand is not improving on its international competitiveness in the use of technology. I want to mention the World Economic Forum's Networked Readiness Index rating for New Zealand which has improved marginally from 5.36 in 2012 to 5.50 in 2016. Meanwhile our ranking in that index has slipped—actually slipped. Despite what Steven Joyce gets up in this Parliament and says almost every question time our ranking has actually slipped from 14 to 17. We rate highly on infrastructure at 10th on the regulatory environment at third but not so well on the economic impacts of ICT at 25th and business usage at 20th.That is where we are lacking and that is where any Government going forward into the 52nd Parliament of this country has to be focused—on how we can get our economy to use the technology effectively. That is what this Government has not done apart from the fact that it has also treated rural New Zealanders as second-class citizens. This legislation provides a regulatory framework going forward from 2020 but it leaves a huge number of questions unanswered around how we are going to treat the copper network what happens to rural New Zealand how fibre is going to be rolled out throughout the whole of New Zealand and the actual role of the infrastructure producer the major infrastructure wholesaler—Chorus—and what its role will be.But I do want to continue to say in my last speech in this House that the two biggest issues in this country for our economy are how a Government going forward will actually ensure that all of the sectors that it is responsible for can ensure that it will build a truly digital economy and how we will achieve digital inclusion. The new measure of poverty in New Zealand will be the digital divide not just between rural and urban New Zealand but within urban New Zealand and the ability of people to access the digital economy to access education to be able to afford to be included and to be able to have the skills.What we need is a comprehensive action plan. We need industry groups to ensure that our productive sectors are focused on how they will manage in the digital economy. At the moment we have no plan for health we have no plan for education and we have no plan for transport. We have no goals that have been set by this Government for how people will access and improve in the digital economy. What we have is a Government that is focused on an ultra-fast broadband network which the Labour Party supports but there has been nothing that has been added on to it. The approach is: We will build it and they will come."I am afraid that the end of this Parliament the 51st Parliament and this piece of legislation have not provided a visionary goal for our country in terms of digital inclusion and in terms of how the digital economy will actually succeed in this country.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Commerce Committee."