Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is a great pleasure to rise to participate in this debate this afternoon. I'd like to first of all acknowledge the gallery upstairs with all of the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) people. It is their petition which basically calls for the Leave no-one behind campaign to address digital exclusion. Earlier when the Minister actually got up and said that this should actually be talking about social inclusion—well I actually disagree. Digital exclusion is right. The reason why they are digitally excluded sometimes when they refuse to participate is because they actually protest against the Government's move to being completely digital with no front-facing services available for some of these people who have disabilities who are aged or who are unable to afford technology. I think it is right—they are digitally excluded and as a result of being digitally excluded they are also socially excluded as well. I applaud your petition which I was privileged to participate in and we now have a special debate because I called for one—I'll take credit for that one.All of the members who have actually brought similar petitions from their own communities are in fact having difficulties. With New Zealand and actually the world increasingly shifting to the digital world where services and deliveries are done online many people particularly people as I mentioned who might have disabilities who have language difficulties who may not be able to afford technology who have learning difficulties or who may be illiterate cannot participate in the everyday function of democracy—where they desire or they need to have information from the Government they're not able to do that and if the means to contact and fill in forms for example is only available online they're not able to. They will have to print it off at home and if they don't have a printer how are they supposed to actually submit their forms? If they don't have the finances to afford a printer to print something from the online form then they have to rely on services like the Citizens Advice Bureau and is anyone supporting the cost—the extra cost—that is incurred by social services like CAB and actually often MPs' offices as well because often we have constituents who come who need some of those services as well. I know that many of our social services do in fact incur these extra costs which are not funded for and I think that's something that the Minister should potentially consider.The loss of easy access to non – digitally-based services particularly in small towns in rural New Zealand has really amplified the digital exclusion situation for our rural communities where front-facing offices have closed. Like many MPs we do regional visits and I was on the West Coast with my colleague Maureen Pugh—it was Westport. If someone for example gets a new EFTPOS card from their bank in the mail—snail mail—they open it—Naisi Chen: Snail mail? MELISSA LEE: —yes—but they have to activate it at the bank and in places like Westport every single bank is closed. How are they supposed to activate it? It is really really difficult for those people to activate those bankcards. Similarly when Government departments only have 0800 numbers—I know it is actually free; 0800 numbers are free—when you have to wait two hours for someone to answer the phone how is it possible that we can declare to New Zealanders that we are providing the service? National was the only party that included in our technology policy—we actually had a technology policy in the election. We wanted to zero-rate data for all of the Government departments so that when people wanted to connect to Government it was cost-free for them because the data cost was not going to be paid for by people who contacted the Government.One of the things that I feel very very strongly is that the Government must explore better relationships with satellite broadband services particularly for rural communities where rural connectivity is so bad and the only option is for them to have satellite. It should give Crown Infrastructure Partners more ways to look at delivering fibre recommend that local government is required to advise Crown Infrastructure Partners on new large-scale developments; and look at digital—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The member's time is up. MELISSA LEE: —exclusion of people in our rural communities and in the cities. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): You've lost a minute Naisi!