Clark David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3770. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I rise to speak for the last time on the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill a bill of broken promises. Labour will be opposing this bill. As many of my colleagues have outlined there are many problems with it. We must say first and foremost it would have been much smarter for the Government to expose this to public scrutiny. The fact that this evening it has imposed on New Zealanders a tax that will be borne by businesses and households without allowing the public to have its say is shameful. There is no need for this rush absolutely no need whatsoever. This obviation of the normal processes is a travesty.Of course we heard the Minister for Communications Amy Adams in her opening speech say that “the industry will not need to put their prices up or explain to their customers why their bill is changing” and within the hour we had one of the major telecommunications companies saying that it would be putting up its prices as a consequence. And of course we know the reason why this is. It is because in that industry planning is years ahead. Telecommunications companies plan years ahead for infrastructure developments and so of course—of course—they have taken into account the fact that the levy was supposed to run out. Of course they have taken that into account in their planning and so they had built in what charges they thought necessary. And now they get slapped with another charge which was unexpected a tax on them that they can and must pass through to their customers. They are going to make their bills transparent so that we see when we use their services the extra dollar per month that that will be costing as a result of this change for each and every business or person connected to this service. That might not sound much to some people but to many business people struggling in the regions that extra dollar does matter—it does matter. It is a marginal cost but it is a cost. Every marginal cost matters. It does become prohibitive for some people. That cost is on top of many other costs that this Government has put on top of small business. It has put up red tape left right and centre. It seems to have no heart for small business. We have heard of plenty of additional taxes: the paper boy tax in the last set of Budgets. We have had the additional child support—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Dr DAVID CLARK: —expectations and so on.But coming back to this bill here we have got in the departmental disclosure statement a clear yes as to whether this is in the nature of a tax. Yet we have the Deputy Prime Minister dancing on the head of a pin. It is a shame he cannot land an aircraft on the head of a pin like the last Labour Government did nine times in getting to surplus. We have him dancing on the head of a pin when his own department says that yes this is a tax. It is one of three new taxes after this Government said it would introduce no new ones before the last election. InternetNZ of course called for a review. It said: “Why do we not look at it and see if this rural broadband money is being spent effectively?”. There is $300 million being poured into this. It does not seem an unreasonable request but a Government that is out of touch might say “No we will not have a review. We do not care that only 8500 people have taken this up by our best estimate. We do not care that it has cost $7000 a head for this particular initiative to be taken up because we are the Government. We won the election and we do not care any more what the people think.”Well that is a Government out of touch I am afraid. It is a Government out of ideas. Introducing new taxes seems to see the big idea we are facing today. The reason of course we can see that this is being passed under urgency is because Government members are trying to hide their failure in rural New Zealand. They are embarrassed at least for their failures in rural New Zealand. Of course I have seen in my own electorate the need to get a petition. A group has gone to the extent of having a parliamentary petition to get rural broadband. I encourage others who are experiencing the same difficulties around New Zealand to do the same to approach their local MPs and to get a petition set up that will be heard by Parliament because this problem is costing hundreds of millions of dollars and the Government is wanting to be unaccountable for spending. This is a Government that does not care about taxpayer funds and that does not care about small business. It is a tragedy. It is a shame. I hope the next speaker because I know he is sympathetic to the issues of small business will take on some of these challenges as well. We have seen a Government that is prepared to break its promises on the surplus in the Budget the biggest promise of all. It was central to the election campaign promise and it has broken it.