Faafoi KrisTELECOMMUNICATIONS (NEW REGULATORY FRAMEWORK) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingHon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Broadcasting Communications and Digital Media): I move That the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.The Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill before the House is an outcome of the statutory review of the Telecommunications Act 2001 and many years of policy development and consultation. The passage of the bill has consistently received unanimous support from the House.Can I begin by acknowledging the education and science and I think infrastructure—Jonathan Young: Economic development.Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Economic development—your committee—for their consideration of the bill. The member's committee sorry—the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. Can I also begin by acknowledging the work of the Hon Clare Curran who held the position that I hold now before and in essence did predominantly most of the heavy lifting over the last 12 months. I'd like to acknowledge the work that she did in conjunction with our coalition partners New Zealand First in terms of the 111 vulnerable consumers aspect of this bill the Chorus anchor price and also for working on the regulatory framework and the additional Commerce Commission funding that was done under her tenure as Minister.The bill provides for the modernisation of the Act and improved regulation of the New Zealand telecommunications sector by in essence doing six things: first of all introducing a stable and predictable framework for the regulation of ultra-fast broadband (UFB) or fibre; secondly removing regulation of copper fixed-line services where consumers have a choice to move to regulated fibre services; third keeping regulation of copper fixed-line services where no alternatives are available; also establishing and extending consumer safeguards and providing more regulatory oversight of the quality of retail services; fifth streamlining other regulatory processes to enable a rapid response to any competition problems; and finally repealing irrelevant and outdated provisions. The whole environment in which the communications industry operates has changed radically over the past 10 years. By June this year 70 percent of New Zealanders had access to UFB fibre and uptake had reached 44 percent. The structural separation of Telecom New Zealand has led to a much more balanced market structure with a flourishing retail sector. The new regulatory environment responds to these changes.The wider consumer protections that the bill affords are a particularly important aspect of the bill and warrant further emphasis to the House. The bill establishes a wider role for the Commerce Commission. It will require the commission to monitor retail service quality and allow the commission to develop consumer codes for retail services and to assess dispute resolution processes in the telecommunications sector. It will also establish a specific Commerce Commission code that requires retail service providers (RSPs) to identify vulnerable consumers based on criteria specified in the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) introduced in the committee of the whole House stage relating for example to health conditions. It will also provide options such as battery backup or alternative emergency calling providers for these consumers—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. I am going to remind the Minister of the prohibition on reading speeches. This is not a technical matter. It is not a first reading. Members are not allowed to read speeches.Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you Mr Speaker for your guidance. Also the third criteria around retail service providers is to meet the expense of providing these options to vulnerable consumers—these things are very technical Mr Speaker. These are new roles for the Commerce Commission and the bill augments the regulatory tool kit that the commission has available to it to protect New Zealand consumers. I for one am pleased as the Minister to report to the House that the Commerce Commission has been allocated a significant amount of funding—$12.3 million in fact; I'm glad I have that information in front of me—over three financial years to implement the new regulatory framework that will be enabled by the bill and has started the process of developing the rules that will govern the new regime.The bill also provides new enforcement powers to the commission to ensure that the new codes may be progressed and enforced on a timely basis to meet consumer needs and that new information disclosure obligations will be complied with.Last week during the committee stage of the bill's reading I did introduce a Supplementary Order Paper that ensures vulnerable consumers do have protection and the ability to make phone calls. If they are fibre-only consumers in a power outage they may find themselves without any phone coverage to make a 111 phone call. I would like to acknowledge the member beside me the Hon Tracey Martin and New Zealand First for their work in advocating to make sure that those vulnerable consumers do have the ability to make a phone call as I mentioned earlier if their fibre is out and they don't have those services available to them. So they will have a battery backup or potentially a mobile phone provided by the RSPs so that if there is an emergency predominantly around health they will have the ability to call a 111 service.As I mentioned earlier I want to thank both the Green and New Zealand First parties our partners in Government for ensuring that the most vulnerable consumers in our society have the ability to look after themselves in an emergency when they need them. This demonstrates that this coalition Government is committed to ensuring that the well-being of New Zealanders is at the heart of all we do.There have been some concerns expressed about some of the provisions in the SOP that was tabled in the committee stage last week. The nature of the risks has been raised and I think these need to be clearly understood. I will refer to my notes here because I want to make sure we put this on the record in plain English: Enable Ultrafast Broadband and Northpower who are three local fibre companies (LFCs) here in the country face more competition than Chorus and they face some competition from Chorus as well as players such as Vodafone and other RSPs. Therefore they will not face price regulation in the first instance and they may never face such regulation. Instead they will be subject to information disclosure a similar regime that operates under Part 4 of the Commerce Act which our airports are exposed to. We believe in a light-handed form of regulation which requires them to share information about their businesses with the Commerce Commission. They will only be subject to more intrusive regulation if the Commerce Commission advises me that they can exercise a substantial degree of market power.I would like to end my contribution again in the fashion that I started by thanking the former Minister the Hon Clare Curran for a lot of the heavy lifting that was done during this process. As I say it was a review of the Telecommunications Act 2001. Some work was done by the previous Government but in our term of Government the heavy lifting was done by the former Minister and I would like to extend my thanks to her for the way that it was done especially in and around the anchor price for Chorus. That will give consumers certainty around the price of the anchor service around UFB for years to come—also Chorus some certainty—and I think that is one of the main benefits out of the work that was done in our time of Government during the shepherding of this piece of legislation through the House. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to it Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: Before I call Jonathan Young I will draw the member's attention to Speaker's ruling 46/6 which I think is a very wise ruling.