Jones Shane: Infrastructure Bill — First Reading 
Jones Shane: Infrastructure Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5840] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the Minister for Infrastructure Bill English on an area in which both the main parties share similar concerns. Firstly I say that Labour will be supporting this bill to go to select committee. It has reservations about Part 4 which have been unwisely exaggerated and distorted by the earlier speaker but that comes with the territory of his type of politics. We hope that when the matter is referred to select committee at the end of the first reading debate some thought is given to the carve-out of Part 4. I will deal with that part first. 
Part 4 reflected a policy initiative at a time when housing affordability captured a great deal of political attention media words and quite frankly societal anxiety. Indeed Phil Heatley and a host of other National politicians who sat on the Commerce Committee if I recall were very enthusiastic about the affordability inquiry run by that committee into the housing prospects of everyday New Zealanders and what a Government at a point in time could do. 
That initiative—which as I recall my colleagues Mr Carter and Maryan Street were advancing—was an attempt to deal with the inexorable rise in the cost of providing infrastructure as developers sought to expand housing estates. At the end of the day councils needed a clear way of ensuring that future ratepayers were not saddled with excessive bills in terms of maintaining infrastructure and they had a way of ensuring that the developers contributed along with local government to make some of the housing affordable. My suggestion is that that part actually be taken out of this proposed legislation and dealt with separately although it is highly likely that ongoing friction and movement in the market will address it in a way that none of us can fully comprehend. 
Let us deal with the three areas that this bill touches on. It is beyond cavil that anyone who has a vision or aspirations for modernising our economy has to continue to invest in infrastructure just as Labour in 2006 advanced with some studies of its own and dealt with the fact that there were far too many blockages in the system according to infrastructure developers. For those reasons this party has already reflected in the Local Government and Environment Committee that it will be taking a very progressive stance in relation to the amendments that are coming back to the House via Nick Smith and the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill which is a small part of what this bill tries to address. 
Access to roads motorways and rail corridors is an essential part of ensuring that we do not slip off the radar and end up in an economic international category that is not a part of the OECD or that does not suit our aspirations and dreams of ensuring that our children have a modern economy and that communications transport and a whole host of other goods and services we take for granted can continue to be delivered in a very efficient way. That is why we are very keen for this bill to go to a select committee and hear as many submissions as possible. 
The bill proposes changes to the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act. This area will always be a source of some debate between the two main parties as will another area of infrastructure which unfortunately has been completely overlooked in any meaningful way in this bill: the role of coastal transportation in terms of our broader transportation infrastructure. We will no doubt hear more about that area in the future but we may need to wait for a change of Government to hear anything lucid on such matters. 
I direct members’ attention to a key portion of this bill: the code of practice. This code proposal has been kicking around for quite some time. It has had some vigorous proponents who brought it to the attention of those of us sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee during consideration of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill. It provides infrastructure developers and infrastructure corporate leaders with a chance to put their rhetoric into practice. There will be the ability for regulations to be passed and punitive remedies will be available for people who do not abide by this code. But in fairness to the architects there is some innovation associated with the notion that the code should be posited in this kind of legislation and it will actually help coordination between the infrastructure developers. The problem does not lie just with local government but also with the way in which they work with each other. 
A key area where I believe we will encounter more submissions has to do with what kinds of organisations in 2009 2010 and 2011 in New Zealand ought to enjoy privileged status in terms of the designation procedures and requiring authority status. I say this because it is an area that has been held over to the second part of the Resource Management Act reforms but it is vitally important and it must be debated in relation to infrastructure. I have no doubt that these submissions will come to the select committee. On one side of the debate are those who are guided by anxieties about social democracy who believe that foreign-owned bodies should not enjoy this privileged status. Others—and I must confess that I myself have been quite persuaded by the arguments of a number of our big utility developers etc.—believe that because of the essential importance that their services represent to modernising the economy and ensuring that the lifeblood of the economy continues to flow there has been historically a case for them to enjoy that status. 
I hope the committee remains alert to those submissions because anything that simplifies the process in terms of ensnarlment in the bureaucracy needs to be both studied and hopefully agreed to. But of course that cannot take place if the thresholds to do with good environmental management are punctured. 
Those of us who have been hanging around the Auckland governance debate have been told of some gross and egregious mix-ups in simple things such as laying pipes. It beggars belief that between the different Auckland local government authorities it has not been possible to have a uniform measurement type of pipe. The continuance of that situation is actually a big source of cost etc. and presumably one of the good things flowing from the consolidation of all the local bodies into the Auckland super-city is that we will see an end to that. 
The other thing we need to bear in mind is that it is wrong for this House to be told continually that only over the last 9 months has there been a positive fillip in relation to investment. We know that that is rubbish. The new Minister has come in and in many respects I am quite impressed by the progress he is making but to really improve it he has to change a number of key personnel in his own party. 
The key point that both parties need to bear in mind though is that this is not just a National or a Labour issue. This is an issue of central government constantly looking for ways to improve the manner in which we invest in infrastructure we consent to infrastructure and we upgrade infrastructure. I will just recite that over the last nine Budgets for example annual funding for roading more than doubled—from $850 million in 1999 through to $1.9 billion in 2007—and whether or not members on the other side of the House want to admit it it has led to an improvement in highways motorway extensions etc. No doubt we will remain disappointed that those members do not have the same level of either commitment or confidence in public transport and they certainly have no interest whatsoever in coastal transport but that is possibly because constituencies that have propelled those members into power need to be rewarded. 
The implications in this bill in relation to KiwiRail and the various telecommunications companies need close attention. One area that I think will enjoy close attention is the spectacular failure of Mr Joyce’s proposal to set up a public-private partnership in relation to growing the size of the pipe moving electronic data around the country. It reflected heroic assumptions but political naivety. Most of the people who might have access to capital do not like the terms of the proposal that are currently on the table. These sorts of things will I think be the subject of submissions to this Infrastructure Bill which we want to see go to a select committee but Ministers on the other side of the House—in particular Mr Joyce and Mr English—need to not show us but to do it. Kia ora tatou.