Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Nga mihi nui o Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori ki a tātou katoa. I rise to support this common-sense non-controversial technical bill. The Green Party supports ultra-fast broadband. We see it as a key plank in modern 21st century infrastructure for a modern digital economy. This is the key platform from which digital companies can be exporting we can be having videoconferencing around the world and game creators in their garages can be exporting their products around the world. We believe in a digital nation. This is like how our ancestors used to invest in ports and railways. This is what our generation invests in as we try to deliver prosperity for future generations. I believe we can be a digital nation. In fact it is important that we embrace this opportunity. There is a limit to how many tourists we can cram into Fiordland. There is a limit to how many cows we can cram into our paddocks. There is no limit to the software the services the intellectual property and the new products that we could be exporting around the world. There is simply no limit and that is our future if we want a richer country. On this note I would like to acknowledge the small tinkering we saw from Minister Hekia Parata—one step towards that today with the tinkering of the curriculum around technology. And look I could not put it better than the chief executive officer of Orion Health who today said in response: After 6 years of waiting a 12 month review process … seven months of deliberation by Minister Hekia Parata and her Ministry all there is to show for it are some minor changes including a pledge for more consultation." We are light years away from the digital nation that we could be where we are growing those high-value jobs delivering those higher-value exports. Instead we are cramming tourists into Fiordland and we are cramming cows into paddocks. And on the ultra-fast broadband although it is something we have seen unanimity across this House in supporting I will not be as charitable as some of the previous speakers have been on the Government's responsibility. It is pretty hard to oppose the Government investing $1.35 billion in broadband but you only have to see the front page of the New Zealand Herald today to see the shoddy process of Steven Joyce in rolling out ultra-fast broadband. I feel sorry for Minister Adams. This is not the only time that Steven Joyce has left a mess for some other Minister to clean up. He was quite happy to get the headlines as he always does with the initial investment but the actual details the technical process is left for another Minister to clean up. You only have to go on to Geekzone or PropertyTalk or Reddit to see it is not just a litany; it is pages and pages of problems that people have with actually connecting to this critical piece of national infrastructure. It is great that we are finally getting around to dealing with a small segment of the problem which is shared access in multi-unit dwellings but we all know it is larger than that. I grew up in New Zealand in the eighties when there was this constant myth that it took 6 weeks to get a telephone connected and how horrible and you know Polish shipyard it was to take 6 weeks. You know how long ultra-fast broadband connections are taking? Longer than that. I have had someone in the internet service provider sector saying that at the end of this year as the connections ramp up we could be looking at 3 months for someone to get connected because of the roundabouts the to-ing and fro-ing and the days off work people have to take to finally get connected. And the Government is deluding itself if it thinks it is simply a problem of shared access in multi-unit dwellings. But this is the problem we have before us in this bill. We support it because there are some pretty common-sense changes and this is exactly what I mean: some pretty common-sense changes that Steven Joyce could not have considered years ago. There are some pretty common-sense changes like a disputes resolution body that Steven Joyce could have included in that bill but instead he decided to ram it through the Parliament as fast as he could and now Minister Adams is having to clean it up. As we talk about cleaning up the mess I would actually like to question the current Minister because I know that this is something that has been on the table for more than 4 years. Why has it taken more than 4 years to finally get this issue resolved? It was entirely foreseeable that we would see problems with shared access in multi-unit dwellings. With having no disputes resolution process it was patently clear we would have these problems down the line and sure although we support these pretty common-sense pragmatic solutions why on earth has it taken so long? For those people on the front page of the paper for those people who have to vent that they have taken days off work that the person has not come round and that the official application form has been lost somewhere in the Byzantine bureaucratic internal dwellings of Chorus why has it taken so long? Why has it taken 4 years to get to the point where we are finally putting a first reading of a bill there? We support the technical changes around the telecommunications development levy and we support the changes around UFB2—pretty uncontroversial. We think the mix the Minister has reached in terms of category 1 and category 2 in apartments is pragmatic. It is hard to find the most elegant solution that will not annoy someone but I think she has found the mix. Our criticism is that it has taken so long. It was not foreseen and once again we are debating the problems. I remember the "Ultra-fast Broadband Amendment Amendment Bill". We are debating the problems trying to retrospectively fix problems that could have been foreseen. We are not taking the opportunities to build a digital nation—to make sure that we are teaching our kids the right skills in school that we are actually finally now teaching our trainee teachers to use digital technology that we are encouraging coding in our schools and that we are encouraging familiarisation and experimentation in the new products to be created in new technologies like manufacturing 3-D printing. We are not debating the huge opportunities we have in the space industry for example with Rocket Lab. No once again the New Zealand Parliament late at night is trying to fix up a mess that was entirely foreseeable. So I will not be as charitable as the Labour Party members tonight. We support the bill but let us do better as a country. Let us build that digital nation."