Tanczos Nandor: Telecommunications Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Telecommunications Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:7136] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 Sometimes I feel like I have been bashing my head against a jagged rock. It is not just me; so have all of the greenies environmentalists “natural capitalists” ecologists hippies climatologists—everyone who has been warning that we are living beyond our ecological means. We have been called weirdos freaks and Luddites—and that is just by the members in this Chamber! We have been objects of derision and loathing for saying the things that today are almost self-evident for saying the things that leaders—political leaders of all shades—are now clambering over each other to claim. Today it is easy to talk about climate change ecological degradation the need to protect the environment and biodiversity and the need to safeguard environmental services; the challenge today is what we are going to do about them. 
A good example is air travel. Carbon dioxide emissions from air travel are responsible for 3.4 percent of New Zealand’s emissions and are growing. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Doug your speech must have been so great he didn’t know what you were talking about. 
NANDOR TANCZOS 
: I ask the member to wait and to be patient. Roughly speaking a kilometre of domestic air travel releases 180 grams of carbon dioxide. So a return trip from Invercargill to Auckland emits half a tonne of carbon dioxide. If we are to start to deal with making New Zealand a carbon neutral country we have to look at how we can change our behaviour with regard to that kind of thing. That means of course doing things like scheduling multiple events on one trip to reduce the need to get on a plane. But also it requires that we maximise the use of communication technologies such as audio conferencing and videoconferencing. One of the things that the Telecommunications Amendment Bill is about is making that kind of technology more accessible to more people more consistently. It is about allowing New Zealanders to take full advantage of those technologies as they develop so that New Zealand can remain economically competitive while ensuring that we are able to protect our environmental sustainability. 
The reason why the Green Party supports this bill—and has supported it from its introduction—is that for us it is all about safeguarding environmental sustainability. It is about future-proofing the New Zealand economy in order that we can survive and thrive as a nation in the new environmental realities of the world that we live in. In my first reading speech I said that if we are to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and make things like telecommuting an actual reality in the day-to-day lives of ordinary New Zealanders then unlocking the potential of broadband in our telecommunications infrastructure is exactly what we need to do. That is precisely why the Greens see this legislation as vital. As I said it is about future-proofing the New Zealand economy and making it more resilient in the face of such threats as climate change and peak oil. 
If we are to do that a careful balance must be struck between ensuring that the legislation leaves in place conditions that support continued investment in a rapidly changing technological environment and at the same time promoting fair competition and affordable access to genuine high-speed broadband. The previous environment simply did not strike that balance. But of course we have to be very careful that any interventions we make do not cause unintended consequences. The bill as introduced was a very good start but left some matters unresolved. I think the Finance and Expenditure Committee did a very good job in grappling with those issues and coming up with key recommendations. 
 As a result of that work important players in the sector have warmly welcomed the amended bill. The Internet Society of New Zealand has congratulated the Finance and Expenditure Committee on its report back and particularly on its recommendation of operational separation of Telecom’s network under an independent oversight group. The Executive Director Keith Davidson says that having the network separated out from the wholesale and retail arms is absolutely necessary. The network he says is the enduring bottleneck and it needs to be separated. 
The committee gave a lot of thought to how best to do that. It was interesting to hear Lockwood Smith tell us all how National had put the hard word on the Government to make sure that structural separation did not take place. It was very interesting to hear him say that and I think we need to put the record straight. Actually the whole committee was interested in producing the best outcomes. The whole committee looked at these matters with an open mind and heard the evidence. For National to say that somehow its members were the bulwark for Telecom is simply incorrect. In fact if I might say so if it had been left to National we might not have the separation we are now looking at. Its members appeared much more willing to accept Telecom’s strange second proposal with its complexity and its inability to achieve the outcomes that we all agreed we were looking for. 
The bill did not originally require either structural separation or operational separation actually. It called for an accounting separation. Although the committee was careful to avoid conducting a direct negotiation with Telecom about the exact form that that operational separation might take we did outline some of the parameters of it and the process for making a relatively speedy decision. One thing is clear: the need to get the job done so that everyone can get on with it in the new regulatory environment. The parameters that we looked at and recommended include a fixed network access services business unit one or more business units that must provide a wholesale function for all relevant services and one or more other business units—and we are talking about the retail side there. The select committee recommended that Telecom must operate these business units at arm’s length from its other business units and must ensure transparency and equivalence in relation to the supply by Telecom of relevant services. The select committee also recommended the insertion of section 69AAE in clause 32 which defines the term “equivalence” as being “equivalence of supply of wholesale telecommunications services and access to Telecom’s network so that third party access seekers are treated in the same or an equivalent way to Telecom’s own business operations including in relation to pricing procedures operational support supply of information and other relevant matters.” in relation to its supply of certain telecommunications services. 
We did not entirely answer the question of whether we are looking at equivalence of inputs or equivalence of outputs especially in relation to legacy products. The Internet Service Providers Association of New Zealand President David Diprose has said that it “is understandable that Telecom would desire Equivalence of Outputs for its so-called legacy products rather than Equivalents of Inputs. However Equivalence of Outputs doesn’t give the necessary results and can be gamed to Telecom’s advantage. Equivalence of Inputs treating all wholesale customers the same as its own ISP is a key practical requirement to provide competition in the market and to achieve the resultant benefits from end-users.” The Greens encourage the Minister of Communications to require equivalence of inputs and to further ensure that he listens very carefully to the results of consultation with stakeholders during the negotiations over the details of how that operational separation will work. 
I would like to end by making a point that relates to my opening remark that sometimes the Greens feel that we have been bashing our heads against a jagged rock for years. The Green MP Sue Kedgley moved amendments during the progress of the previous Telecommunications Amendment Bill to introduce local loop unbundling. At the time that did not have the support of the House. But as with issues of climate change it has taken a few years for the rest of the House to catch up and even in this case—if not in the case of climate change—to go further than the position the Green Party originally put. I think this report is an excellent piece of work from a select committee working on a cross-party basis and I thoroughly commend it to the House.