GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) : I notice that the next order of business for the House is the Committee stage on the Limited Partnerships Bill. I seek leave of the House for there to be one debate in the Committee stage with one question.

Madam SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) : We come to the Committee stage of the Broadcasting Amendment Bill, and we are now talking about Part 1. We had the second reading in the House last night, and it is pretty clear that all parties will support this bill.

As we discussed, the bill essentially brings the funding arrangements up to date, in line with the technology. When the Broadcasting Act 1989 was passed, only television and radio were on the horizon in New Zealand; we are now in a totally different environment. We have had the digital revolution, and we are now in an environment where broadcasting already involves a lot of different platforms, whether they be the Internet, mobile phones, things like video on demand—

Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s not broadcasting; that’s narrow-casting.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The Minister will get his chance to take a call. The general point is that the Broadcasting Amendment Bill actually engulfs, or encompasses, a variety of platforms. The current funding arrangements are really outdated for the technology we have now. This bill will allow the broadcasting funding agencies, NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho, which is the Māori broadcasting funding agency, to direct funding to a variety of platforms. Previously, as I said, they were allocating them just to television and radio. But in this new environment we have to accept that people will source content across a variety of platforms, and the arrangements have to reflect that.

National has been supportive of this bill right from the start, but what this bill really brings into focus are the areas where we do not agree with the Government. I think there will be some significant points of debate in the field of broadcasting in the future. We heard last year about Television New Zealand (TVNZ) failing abysmally in financial terms under the yoke of this Government’s policy, which has saddled it with this dual remit whereby it has to give the Government a dividend and, on top of that, it also has to perform to the expectations of the charter. As my colleague Richard Worth aptly summed up last night, the charter, as we have it now, is just a set of aspirational statements with nothing concrete that we can measure any outputs against. This leads to a heck of a lot of confusion, and we have had some ridiculous examples of what constitutes a charter programme.

It is quite clear that the Government does not actually agree with the people at TVNZ. There was no clearer example of that than when the chief executive of TVNZ, when asked by the Māori Affairs Committee last year what Māori programming was currently on State television, named programmes such as Location Location Location and Police Ten 7. Quite clearly, those programmes do not represent Māori broadcasting. We have such a loose charter that TVNZ can try to fit any old programme within what is prescribed by the charter. It is a pretty unsatisfactory state of affairs. Steve Maharey, when he was the Minister of Broadcasting, was very keen on the idea of the charter; it has really been his baby. One really has to ask oneself what has changed between before the charter and after it. Has it really made a difference to what is on our screens? Well, if one actually looks at it, one sees that the reality is that the charter was supposed to deliver more local content for New Zealanders, but in actual fact we now have less. If one of the functions of the charter is to ensure that New Zealanders can see content that reflects how we live here in this country, one would have to argue that it is not actually performing as one would hope it might.

But this Government has more problems in broadcasting than just TVNZ, because it also has the issue of FreeView and digital broadcasting. The Government has invested a lot of taxpayer money into these new digital channels—$104 million in total. TVNZ was given $79 million to set up the channels, then an extra $25 million. The reality is that the numbers of viewers have not grown as quickly as they might have. Have they plateaued? That is the real question. Unless the Government actually sets a date for switching off the analog TV signal, or puts something on those channels that is really compelling to watch, I do not think we will see the numbers grow.

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Labour—Rimutaka) : I do not see much need to prolong the agony of this tiny little bill, which brings us 10 years up to date. Essentially, as has already been said, the funding agencies are currently allowed to fund content that can be watched only on television. The Broadcasting Amendment Bill broadens the role so that the agencies, Te Māngai Pāho and the Broadcasting Commission, can fund content to be used in other forms, such as the Internet and cellphones, as well as television.

Although I think it is very interesting to hear a wider debate and discussion about whether the charter has met its objectives, funding issues, etc., the reality is that this bill is a tiny little thing. It simply takes us into this century, and I—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Probably hardly that.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: The member is probably right. All I recommend is that we progress this matter as soon as possible.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) : In that respect the member who has just resumed his seat is absolutely correct—the Broadcasting Amendment Bill is probably long overdue. I guess those who inhabit the world of Generation Y—or is it Generation X—would say: “Goodness me, where do these people come from? They are taking so long to enable the funding of new formats.” Obviously it is a phenomenon that will be understood a lot better by them than by some of us here.

National supports this bill, obviously. It enables the two funding agencies, NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho, to fund the production, transmission, and archiving of new forms of digital content. That is particularly important in the digital broadcasting environment. Also important is the fact it amends Te Māngai Pāho’s primary function by adding the archiving of Māori language and culture programmes to those matters that it already funds. That is very important given that Māori culture and language are key to New Zealand’s unique identity. Again, one would think that measure was overdue as well. It is a proper amendment to be made, and, as I said at the beginning, it is probably long overdue in respect of both these funding agencies.

My colleague Dr Coleman was right to put an emphasis on the woes of Television New Zealand (TVNZ) and the Government’s performance in that arena in the last 9 years. It is interesting that Marian Hobbs is the presiding officer in the Chair, because the charter might more rightly be called her baby. But let us attribute the baby to both Marian Hobbs and Steve Maharey, who are so in love with it. It has proved, in a way, to be their Achilles heel, in National’s view. The dual remit has seen TVNZ, as I say, have a very woeful time of it for the whole 9 years this Government has been in power, and, frankly, there is nothing to say that in 2008 it has got its head around it yet. That is not a fair return to the taxpayer—it just is not. Millions of dollars have gone into a black hole. There has been no accountability whatsoever. Every time others try to get some accountability, especially at the select committee, when I was more involved in broadcasting in previous years, they would say: “This is commercially sensitive.” So there was never any way that one could actually pin TVNZ down.

One matter I want to mention is that National would be very, very concerned if, for instance, TVNZ applied funding for content that could be accessed only through pay-per-view cellphones. This is taxpayer funding we are talking about, and it seems to me that sometimes TVNZ tends to forget that. That is an area we would be very concerned about. I have just seen, in the Independent, I think, an article about TVNZ setting up a pay-per-view channel. Well, goodness me; TVNZ gets taxpayers’ money to deliver FreeView into, hopefully, every home. The cost, of course, is prohibitive, and there will be a lot of New Zealanders who are not able to afford the cost of taking on FreeView. Many of them also have Sky anyway, and have had it for some years. They have been willing to pay. TVNZ needs to think about that, but still it goes to the Government, as it just did in the last weeks of last year.

There are some reports of TVNZ going to Te Māngai Pāho wondering why Te Māngai Pāho was starting to be a bit tough on its plans for Māori programming. I will never forget the day—and my colleague referred to this—when representatives of TVNZ came into the Māori Affairs Committee and had a list of programmes that they thought fitted the Māori remit. One TVNZ person referred to programmes about Māori being in jail, and about a Māori family buying a house on Location Location Location. It was absolutely ridiculous. No doubt Dancing with the Stars qualifies because there are some Māori dancing on there.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) : I would say that we should be able to feel immensely proud of our public broadcasting system, but we have not actually got to that stage yet. We have not got there, I think, because we have created a situation that is almost impossible for public broadcasters and in particular for Television New Zealand. We require that it acts in a commercial manner, but we also require that it fulfil the provisions of a charter—and I will briefly touch on that.

I would also say that it is unfortunate that we are not presented with a greater opportunity in this bill to make the sorts of changes that I believe should be made. There was the opportunity in this bill, for example, to provide security of funding flows to Television New Zealand, to New Zealand On Air, to Māori radio, and to Māori television. We have not done that. There was also an opportunity to put in some hard, measurable goals so that those organisations responsible for funding could have confidence that the money would be wisely spent. We have not done that. National is supporting this bill, but we say it is a pity because it could have gone so much further and been so much better. It could have been a seamless web, but in fact it is now, rather, a tangled web, I would say. It could have been clear of ambiguity in those areas of broadcasting where there is ambiguity, but that has not been done. I would say that the objectives for public broadcasting should be spelt out with a clarity that incentivises those who are involved in public broadcasting, and for those who are in that body of listeners or viewers who can gain pleasure and enjoyment in knowing that professional product is being delivered to their ears and to their eyes.

I have made comment about the Television New Zealand charter, because of course these organisations that we have identified—in particular, NZ On Air—have that funding responsibility. The charter, as I said last night, is in the process of review. Indeed, it is a plan for the Commerce Committee to look at its content in the next short period, by way of inquiry. But the charter itself is so broad-based, it is so aspirational, it is so meaningless, and it is so lacking in measurable goals that it is in need of substantial rewriting. One needs only to look at the way it is structured to see that that is quite clearly so. I gave as an instance the section in the charter that is headed “An Informed Society”, and if one follows through the particular parts in just that section one sees how inadequate and broad-brushed those provisions are.

So in supporting the legislation, I express the hope that the next time broadcasting legislation is presented to us in bill form, it will achieve some of the objectives that are so clearly lacking here.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First) : Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to continue our support for this legislation, which the Minister is responsible for bringing to this Committee. I will comment in relation to the extended functions provided to Te Reo Whakapuaki Irirangi under Part 1 of this bill. The Government ought to be lauded for providing this extension, given the advancements made in technology and the uptake that the people of New Zealand are making in terms of this new technology. But I tell this Committee—and I am glad that the officials are present—that with these new, extended responsibilities, I hope that when the budgetary round comes around and bids are made, the funding for Te Reo Whakapuaki Irirangi, also known as Te Māngai Pāho, will be increased to match the increased responsibilities that have been extended to that organisation.

Allied to that, of course, is the fact that—as I understand it, and as alluded to by the previous speaker, Dr Richard Worth—the charter is currently being reviewed. I hope that as a consequence of this bill, people like those in Television New Zealand will not exercise their licence to include such programmes as those that have been referred to, like Location, Location, Location, to address their commitment to the charter of meeting that particular requirement. I wanted to mention that in this debate, and to reiterate the point that New Zealand First certainly supports the intent of this bill.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) : Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. Kia ora tātou katoa e te Whare. I also want to speak to this bill. The Māori Party will also be supporting it, but I will take the opportunity to raise a couple of issues.

One is an issue that I raised in my speech yesterday, which was that in 20 years there has been only one operational increase in funding for Māori radio stations. That increase was a one-off, and it came last year. That is a record to be ashamed of, considering that the funding came as a result of a High Court decision that obligated the Crown to take steps to protect Māori language and culture.

I am thankful that we do have Māori radio and Māori television, and I think that they provide our country with an opportunity, particularly, to hear Māori music. Māori music was simply not getting played anywhere until Māori radio came along. In fact, when we started our Māori radio station in Kaitāia, back in 1989, on 17 December at 6 a.m., we had only a half a dozen CDs, apart from music by Howard Morrison and a couple of others.

Hon Mark Burton: They were good.

HONE HARAWIRA: They were not good; actually, they were fabulous, and we played them time and time again. Howard is the guy they called in for Labour, but he is actually a signed-up member of the Māori Party.

Be that as it may; the important thing is that there have been positive steps, but I would like to see not just a commitment to ongoing funding but a commitment to an ongoing increase in funding, if for no other purpose than to match the rate of inflation. There has not been any operational increase per station since that time. So it is an issue that we would like to see considered.

We would also like to see whether it is possible to consider the make-up of Te Māngai Pāho itself, which is done by ministerial appointment. I use as an example the appointment of the board for Māori television, which is a joint exercise between the Crown and a Māori electoral college known as Te Pūtahi Paoho. That model has been used in fisheries and in a number of other activities as a result of Te Pūtahi Paoho first being used to establish a Crown relationship in the appointment of bodies like the Māori Television Service board.

I was the first chairperson of Te Pūtahi Paoho and I think that the model is a particularly worthwhile one to be considered for the appointment of members to Te Māngai Pāho and possibly even Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori. That is a different entity again from broadcasters but Te Taura Whiri has a role in the establishment and monitoring of standards for Māori broadcasters, so it makes sense to consider whether those governance functions should be established in the same manner. Koinā nō taku kōrero.

[That is my address.]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) : I think previous speakers have brought up a number of points that bear revisiting. When we look at what this change will mean to funding arrangements, we see that it really reflects the broadcasting environment that we are moving into. We talked previously about the fragmentation of audiences across platforms. The fact that Te Māngai Pāho and New Zealand On Air will be able, after this bill passes, to fund content for those different platforms really sends a message to the traditional broadcasters, and that is that the days of audiences going to just one broadcaster to get all their content are rapidly disappearing. The generation of people who are under 25—and, let us face it, none of them is in this Chamber—currently source their broadcasting content very much on an iPod model. They use software like LimeWire to download episodes of popular programmes, like Desperate Housewives, from websites in America. They watch what they want, when they want. I can tell members that the broadcasting environment is changing very, very quickly.

That is a major threat for traditional broadcasters like Television New Zealand (TVNZ) and TV3, because viewers will not be glued to just one channel. They will not just sit through whatever stuff is served up, or sit through commercials. It is not a matter of their just channel surfing; they are going to assemble their own content very much along the iPod model for music. They will put all the stuff they want to access in one place, they will watch it when they want to, and they will not have to watch the advertisements. That is going to be a major challenge.

Hon Trevor Mallard: People are doing it already.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, that is what I said.

Hon Trevor Mallard: You said that they will, but they are now.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, increasingly more people will, but people are doing it already. But I bet the Minister of Broadcasting is not doing it.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Well, actually I’ve got some very good people who help me with it.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The Minister is getting help—OK. He admits he needs help in this domain. But I think the Minister will acknowledge that this is very much something that the younger generation of New Zealanders are doing. For people above the age of, say, 30 it may be a novel concept, but that is the way it is going to go.

What does it mean for TVNZ and TV3? It means it will be very hard for them to continue making the money that they have made out of advertising. Their audiences are dropping off. They are decreasing year by year. With that audience drop-off there is far less advertising revenue, and, of course, the bottom line for those stations will not be good. It will be adversely affected. Last year, we saw from TVNZ’s financial results that it had its first-ever loss. It was a loss of $4.5 million on revenue of $375 million. One has to ask what TVNZ is going to do to respond to that. That is the real challenge that faces the executives of TV channels today. They are trying a variety of different strategies, but they do not know whether any of them will work. Last year TVNZ launched TVNZ ondemand, which is a web-based model whereby people pay to download content, but TVNZ does not know whether it will work. It does not really know whether it will produce enough revenue to turn things round. All broadcasters are facing these challenges, and it will be interesting to see what the revenue models for broadcasting in the future are actually about.

My colleague Georgina te Heuheu also mentioned that this bill will allow for the funding of Māori content, and I think that is highly appropriate. Māori content was not being produced 20 years ago, when the Broadcasting Act was originally passed. This bill brings the legislation into line with the cultural needs of New Zealanders, and I think everyone would support that happening.

I mentioned earlier the review of digital broadcasting. I think it will be pretty interesting. There is a lot of pretty wordy documents there. I do not think many members of the public will read through them. They will mainly be of interest to broadcasting academics, politicians of course, and a few journalists. They lay out a series of options for regulation. It is my belief that the Government does not want this regulation issue to rear its head before the election. It knows that the public response could be pretty mixed.

But the Government has a problem: it has put $104 million into FreeView, and, basically, it has to make it financially viable. There are two options. At some point the Government will have to turn off the analog TV signal, and everyone will have to be able to access digital television. But the Government will be faced politically with a difficult situation. There will always be a group of people who are late adapters, or who do not have the financial wherewithal to take up digital television. I think that that is one of the challenges for the Minister. I hope he will take a call to tell us what the plan is.

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s hardly part of this.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The Minister has said that in 2012—

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s a very good discussion at the second reading.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The Minister can take a call. He has plenty to say now. We would love the Minister to take a call.

Hon Member: It’s not in this bill.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, broadcasting encompasses this issue, which is what people want to hear about. The relevance to this bill is that we are moving into the digital environment and this bill is all about—

Hon Mark Burton: Yes.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Mark Burton says that is true, so there we go. It must be true if Mark Burton, the previous Minister of Justice, says it is true.This bill is all about broadening out the financing arrangements to reflect technological changes. The digital review of broadcasting is all about the Government’s drift-net for ideas, because it is out of ideas. Frankly, it is completely exhausted after a shocking 9 years. It needs new ideas for broadcasting. It has thrown this bill out for public consultation, and it is hoping the public will throw up a few ideas so that it can justify the sort of regulation it needs to bring in if FreeView is to be a success. When this Government goes, in the election later this year, I think it will be a great relief to a lot of these people, because they will not have to deliver on a lot of this Government’s lofty ideals and plans for broadcasting. FreeView will become an albatross to sling around someone else’s neck, because this Government will really struggle to deliver on it and make it viable.

With FreeView, the Government has set up digital television channels that are part of TVNZ. The people who watch those channels, which $104 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on, have to come from somewhere. Where will they come from? They will come across from Television One and TV2. There is no advertising on those digital channels, so the problem is that if those channels are a success, they will take audiences away from the channels on which TVNZ can show advertising, and its revenues will go down. If that does not happen, then the digital channels, by definition, will fail. So the Minister is really stuck between a rock and a hard place. He is faced in this bill—which we all support—with some real challenges, because this bill will speed up the fragmentation of audiences. It will take them away from Government-favoured projects like FreeView, and that will produce a real headache for the Minister. He will have to come up with some answers as to how FreeView can be viable and how TVNZ can continue to be viable.

The last point I would make is that National members are very keen that any funding given to new platforms goes to programmes that are available free to air to New Zealanders. We think that if a programme has Government funding, people should be able to access it on a free-to-air platform. Within that we would include FreeView, because analog television will disappear. But we do not want Government funding to disappear to a Vodafone pay-per-view download on to a mobile phone, or any pay-per-view sort of platform. It is really important that there is accountability around Government funding, and that the public have access to it. We saw in the Independent yesterday that TVNZ is thinking about getting into pay TV. Well, we would say that pay TV—

Hon Trevor Mallard: No, it’s rubbish.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Here we go; it is the Minister again. He ought to take a call. He will get a chance in a minute, but I bet that he will not take it. I bet the Minister that he will not take a call. He will just interject on other speakers.

Hon Trevor Mallard: How much?

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, I ask the Minister how much we should make it.

• The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 178 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to clause 6 be agreed to.

• Amendment agreed to.

• Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) : When I first looked at Part 2 I thought there would probably be little in it. After all, it is headed “Miscellaneous” and it comprises only three clauses, which are numbered as clauses 14, 15, and 16. But then my attention was drawn to the heading to clause 14, which is “Stylistic amendments to Broadcasting Act 1989”. The clause referred us to the schedule, to see exactly what those stylistic amendments were. I do not believe that they are stylistic amendments, at all. They are not issues of style; they are issues of grammar and issues of punctuation shortfall.

The amendment to section 4(1), which is the first item identified in the schedule, states: “Omit ‘which’ and substitute ‘that’.” Is that a style change? I think not. Those of us who have suffered under the hands of stern grammar masters and mistresses know that they would not have us yield to an argument that that was a style change. Then I looked at the amendment to section 6(1)(ba) and saw: “Omit ‘seconds’ and substitute ‘seconds’ ’ ”. I wondered what the change was there. Well, it is quite subtle. It is an apostrophe after the second “s”. Is that a style change? I would say that it is probably a grammar change. I do not believe that it is a punctuation change. In the amendment to section 16(2) we are treated to another example: “Omit ‘unless—’ and substitute ‘unless,—’.” I wondered what the significance of that might be, if a court came to interpret the provisions of section 16(2), which in some particular setting might assume critical importance.

I then noted another issue, which was the amendment to the heading to section 70C. There was a bold plan there: “Omit ‘Contents’ ”—which is in bold script—“and substitute ‘Particulars’.”, which is similarly in bold script. I invite the Minister in the chair, Trevor Mallard, who clearly is familiar with this legislation, to explain why that—it seems to me—particularly subtle change was necessary. What is wrong, in the context of section 70C, with using the word “Contents”? Why must later generations who look at this legislation be forced to speculate on the reason for the change from “Contents” to “Particulars”?

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) : I can see that my colleague has very cleverly motivated the Minister to take a call, and we look forward to that shortly. I thought that my colleague raised some very, very important issues. If he does not mind, I just want to mention one that I do not think he mentioned. Again reading from the schedule to the bill, it is in relation to a change under section 71(4) where it states: “Omit ‘77A,’ ”—with a comma—“and substitute ‘77A’.”—

Hon Trevor Mallard: With no comma.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: —with a full stop.

Dr Richard Worth: The comma’s been lost.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: The comma has been lost. It is absolutely intriguing. I can see that the Minister has hurriedly pulled some book out of the—

Hon Trevor Mallard: The dictionary.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: It is the dictionary. We await his response with keen anticipation, at 4.30 on a Thursday afternoon, with some MPs contemplating flying out of Wellington this evening. Who knows, the Minister’s contribution in a few minutes might be just the tonic we all need to send us on our way at the end of what has been an interesting week.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I’m ready to go.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: OK—all right. Just one thing, though, that I want to pick up from my earlier contribution is that National would be concerned if Television New Zealand thought it could use the funding for content that comes through pay telephone. I am not sure how we monitor that. Some of these new platforms are so clever. I hope the Government knows just exactly how it will keep an eye on those matters. This is taxpayers’ money we are talking about that has come through both New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho. As such, the content that it funds, no matter which platform it comes through, must always be freely available to all New Zealanders.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Broadcasting) : Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to explain this matter. It is somewhat embarrassing, as a former accountant and a person with a variety of interests, to have the role of correcting the English used in legislation of the former Minister of Broadcasting Marian Hobbs, whose specialty was English. But some things have slipped through Committee stages in the past. I am sure the legislation would have been fine when it went to the select committee; surely—and unfortunately—the work of my colleague the former Minister of Broadcasting was undone in a grammatical sense within the select committee.

A number of these kinds of debates occur. I have heard debates in the Cabinet committee room around “which” and “that”, and it is fair to say that opinions are divided as to when each should be used. There is a traditional form and there is a higher form, and the higher form sometimes applies. In respect of things like having commas in the correct place and having apostrophes where they are appropriate, I think that taking the opportunity to do a bit of tidying up, as we are doing now, is particularly important.

I turn to the replacing of “Contents” with “Particulars”. I think it is important, because—

Dr Richard Worth: A tricky point.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, “content” when talking in Parliament about broadcasting, can actually have two senses. I am sure “His Excellency” will know that “content” is a very particular phrase from the House of Lords. It is what—[Interruption] Oh, the member has not spent time there? People in the House of Lords do not say “Aye” or “No”; they express the fact that they are “Content”. That is the genteel—

Dr Richard Worth: Oh, I see.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I am surprised that I am teaching “Lord Worth of Monaco” the approaches of the House of Lords. Trevor Mallard teaching Richard Worth about gentility is, I think, an interesting lesson! But “content” obviously has a particular meaning—I should not use the word “particular”; it has a specific meaning—within broadcasting that goes a bit further than “list of contents” or “particular matters to which are being referred”. That is why the change has been made, and I think it is logical.

I think it is fair to say that this Thursday afternoon debate is reminding me somewhat of what a Friday morning used to be like. When I was first a member here—and I do not think there is anyone as young as I was; Metiria Turei might be of that generation—members used to do regular work, and to work on Fridays. The debates then did not always get to the core of the major issues.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: Where is this speech going?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I was asked some questions by “Lord What’s-his-name of Monaco” and I have given him some responses. There are questions of language and there are questions of tidiness. I think every opportunity should be taken to get clarification in language, because, unfortunately, some of the member’s former colleagues who are currently on the judiciary get quite perturbed about the position of a comma.

CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) : I rise to take a brief call on Part 2 of the Broadcasting Amendment Bill. It is a brief part that contains the miscellaneous provisions.

I do not want to dwell on clause 14, “Stylistic amendments to Broadcasting Act 1989”. These amendments were ably covered by my colleague from Auckland Dr Richard Worth, and they were covered again by the Minister in the chair. It is not clause 14 that I want to cover in any detail; nor is it clause 16, “Remedial technical amendment to Television New Zealand Act 2003”. No, it is, in fact, clause 15 that I would like to focus on in some detail.

Clause 15 is entitled “Spent sections of Broadcasting Act 1989 repealed”. That clause gets to the heart of some key National Party policies. It is about driving out bureaucracy and driving out regulation—taking bureaucracy and compliance costs out of the marketplace and out of legislation. The Broadcasting Amendment Bill does that in clause 15. It is at the heart of what the National Party stands for—getting rid of compliance costs for small businesses, and allowing them to get ahead without the burden of undue compliance costs. We see this in clause 15—in some detail.

Clause 15(a) repeals section 92, which was a transitional provision in relation to the broadcasting station levies. Clause 15(b) removes section 93, which was a transitional provision in relation to the Broadcasting Tribunal. Getting rid of bureaucracy and getting rid of compliance costs are at the heart of the National Party’s vision for this country. We want to make it simpler for businesses out there to get ahead, to grow their businesses, to improve their profitability, and, ultimately, to improve the wages they pay to their employees. That is a core part of National Party policy.

Clause 15(c), which repeals section 94, drives out more compliance and more regulation. Clause 15(d) takes out section 95, which was a transitional provision in relation to radio apparatus licences. It is a provision that we no longer need, and it needs to be driven out of the bureaucracy and out of the legislation, to ensure that we reduce compliance costs.

Lastly, clause 15(e) repeals a small section, section 96. It takes out of legislation the requirement for a final report of the Broadcasting Tribunal. Who needs a final report? We do not, so let us get rid of it. Again, getting rid of compliance costs and driving them out is at the heart of National Party policy. That is why the National Party will be voting for Part 2.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): Before I call Dr Jonathan Coleman, I say that you are the last person I will call. I think we are almost frittering with the Committee’s time. The last speeches we have had have been actually reading the bill.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) : I want to comment on the Minister’s contribution. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Trevor Mallard, has an awful lot to say when other people are speaking, but when it came to his opportunity he just dwelt on those minor stylistic points. We were really hoping he would address some of these serious issues that we were discussing relating to the implications of this bill and the impact it will have on the broadcasting landscape. For the Minister to get up and talk about minor points of grammar, style, and apostrophes was a wasted opportunity.

What is interesting here is that clause 16, “Remedial technical amendment to Television New Zealand Act 2003”, brings us back to the charter debate. That was the Act that established the charter, and the charter is at the heart of a lot of the difficulties we are currently seeing Television New Zealand in. As my colleague Dr Worth said to the House last night, the charter is nothing more than a set of aspirational statements with no measurable goals. That really is the problem. The charter can mean all things to all people. We can put “Dancing on the Stars” on television and that can be construed as a charter programme.

Jill Pettis: With! With!

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I have heard that Mrs Pettis is going to be on that programme in 2009, when she has left the House, and that will be pretty interesting.

We see the problem that the charter is placing Television New Zealand in. It is being told on the one hand that it has to return this dividend to the Government—it was let off the hook on that last year—but on the other hand it is supposed to be providing public broadcasting content for all New Zealanders. When we look at the reality of what we see on a Television New Zealand promo and we line that up against the charter, it is hard to see what the connection is. If we look at any promotion for what is on Television New Zealand and what is coming up, we see it features all the entertaining American, British, and European shows. We have The Sopranos, The Tudors, and Desperate Housewives. If we look at the charter and all this notional, aspirational stuff, we could say that all it really is is something that is holding Television New Zealand back. Why are there no measurable, concrete goals?

We have just had this charter review and we are going to be reviewing the redrafted option soon at the Commerce Committee. I have read through it pretty closely. All it does is rearrange headings, reclassify material, and rearrange the chairs on the deck of the charter Titanic. I think it is pretty disappointing stuff and I reckon the Minister should get up, take a call, and say what his plans are for getting TVNZ back into the black. It is this Television New Zealand Act 2003 that has got Television New Zealand into much of this trouble. The Minister really has to address these problems. He cannot just fritter away and wind down his time to the election by stalling, by getting up when he has an opportunity to talk on broadcasting and just giving vague, vacuous speeches on apostrophes, as he did when he was referring to the schedule. We had Dr Richard Worth cover that material in admirable form.

Let us go back to clause 16, “Remedial technical amendment to Television New Zealand Act 2003”. That particular clause does not do much. Subclause (1) amends the Act. Subclause (2) states: “The item relating to the Broadcasting Act 1989 in Schedule 1 is amended by omitting ‘Preamble’ and substituting ‘Long Title’.” I think we could apply those comments to much of what the Minister said when he had the opportunity to speak on this.

Part 2 just mops up a few miscellaneous aspects of this short and succinct bill, which it looks like the whole of the Parliament will be supporting. Just to sum up again, I say that it changes the funding arrangements whereby NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho, the Māori broadcasting funding authority, can fund content across a range of platforms. People are sourcing their content on the Internet and they are looking well beyond traditional television and radio. This brings us into the 21st century and means that the funding arrangements will be fit for the future. That will be pretty important. The main caveat we have to have is that if this content is to be funded with public money, it has to be available to all New Zealanders free to air. We do not want it to be pay-per-view. I would like to hear the Minister talk about this. I know Mrs Pettis is getting bored; this well exceeds her attention span.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First) : I hope that my short contribution will not be regarded as frittering away the Committee’s time. I just want to go back to clause 14. I ought to say that the English teacher at the Mōtatau Māori District High School would probably have used the word “grammar” as opposed to “stylistic”. But I want to commend the Minister for actually using the word “stylistic”, because in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, there was a group called the Stylistics, a Motown group from America. I think it is just appropriate that it is used here in a bill called the Broadcasting Amendment Bill.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Before my time!

PITA PARAONE: Yes, that is true. But I would have thought that if previous speakers who have spent a bit of time talking about whether that was the right use of language felt so strongly about it, they would have submitted a Supplementary Order Paper, and I perhaps might have supported it. But in the absence of a Supplementary Order Paper I just want to reiterate and congratulate the Minister on his choice of words in this part. Kia ora.

• Part 2 agreed to.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) : I really had not intended to take a call on the Broadcasting Amendment Bill until a few moments ago, when I looked at these three short clauses and suddenly realised what their significance might be. One is the title clause, the second is the commencement clause, and the third is an amendment to the principal Act. As I looked at the title clause, I read: “This Act is the Broadcasting Amendment Act 2007.” Then it occurred to me that we are in 2008, so clearly a change is required there.

Then I looked at the commencement provision: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Now, there are a number of different ways of drafting commencement provisions; I guess there are three that are commonly in use. This is an example of one. Another way that commencement clauses are worded is to provide for a specific date, and a third is to provide for a date so many days after a Gazette publication.

Before the Chairperson assumed the Chair this afternoon, we were briefly contemplating the Limited Partnerships Bill. There was comment in that bill as to what the Commerce Committee saw as the preferred way that commencement clauses should be drafted. As we saw in the context of the Limited Partnerships Bill, this is not the preferred way. The preferred way, I would contend—and I would be supported by the Commerce Committee in this regard—is to actually nominate a specific date, and we do not see that here. Although the class of case that involves legislation coming into force after a Gazette notice is probably the most to be deplored, because of course it adds a substantial degree of uncertainty, there is, nevertheless, a degree of uncertainty with this type of commencement clause. So I urge the Minister to take back to his colleagues the proposition that it is a better plan, a much better plan in this particular case, to have a firm date. What would be the downside of specifying that in the context of this legislation? Absolutely nothing.

So I come to clause 3, “Principal Act amended”, which states: “This Act amends the Broadcasting Act 1989.” In the course of this debate we have examined exactly what the impact of this bill will be on that legislation, and noted the tragedy that the opportunity was not taken to make substantial and more far-reaching change to the bill than has occurred in this particular instance. We are looking at quite serious issues, certainly, when we look at the position of Television New Zealand, because we see that since 2003 the value of Television New Zealand has gone down from $381 million to $194 million, and operating revenue has dropped by $117 million, or around 24 percent. The aspirations in the charter, which has been so derided in the course of this debate, have also failed to deliver local content. In 2002 Television One was delivering 60 percent total local content; in 2006 the figure was 53 percent. Over the same period local content on TV2 dropped by 5 percent, and it is now just 20 per cent. So I repeat the view of National that it is a pity a greater effort was not made in this legislation to produce for us a public broadcasting system of which we could be much more truly proud.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Broadcasting) : I will respond briefly to the points that the member Richard Worth made.

I will not refer much to his comments with regard to clause 3. It is clear that this bill is a minor bill, and it is clear also that major work is going on, and that major legislation will follow on from the digital review.

On the question of the commencement date, I generally agree with the member’s comments. Whenever there is a substantive amendment, I think it is important to be clear. The approach in clause 2 is one that does leave a lot of power in the hands of the executive. I was trying to bring to the front of my mind a particular piece of legislation that was passed when National was in Government, I think in coalition with New Zealand First, that was never brought into effect, because the Order in Council was—

Dr Richard Worth: The Lawyers and Conveyancers Act was a very good illustration.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: We will just leave that. I think the point needs to be made that this approach leaves a lot of power in the hands of the executive rather than in the hands of Parliament. I agree with the member that with, especially, something of substance—I am not pretending that this is substantive legislation; it is minor legislation—it is important to be clear.

On the first point that the member made, I was surprised by it. He is an experienced member and he is a lawyer. He should know by now that the Clerk’s Office does amend, and it is within the discretion of the Clerk’s Office to amend legislation for things like the date.

John Carter: He knows what he is talking about, unlike the Minister.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I know what I am talking about. Members do not have to have been here for as long as I have to know that the date of an Act is something that is amended on the way through, after this process, by the Clerk’s Office. Doing it that way saves another printing of the bill. It saves us a bit of money, and I think it is a logical thing to do.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) : I suppose we can be appreciative of the Minister in the chair, the Hon Trevor Mallard, talking a call. But, again, I thought he might just treat us, with it being 1 hour now until the end of Thursday—the end of a parliamentary week in Parliament—to the plan for the future. That seems to be a favourite slogan that the Prime Minister is rolling out after her visit to the Australian Prime Minister. The Minister did say there will be major legislation following the review. That is of the charter, I take it?

Hon Trevor Mallard: No, no, no, the digital review.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: It is the digital review.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: The secret agenda!

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: I am not sure. I am not sure when he thinks that major legislation will come in, because he is actually running out of time. So it might have been a great thing for him—as Labour is running out of time, and as he might not get his so-called major legislation on to the floor of the House—to treat us to his views. I am not sure how long the Minister has been in this particular job. He will have some views, obviously; he has been here a long time.

My colleague Jonathan Coleman has been asking pretty continuously about the continued roll-out of digital and about the switch-off of analog. He has asked many times over the last year. This Minister might not necessarily know because he has only just taken over the job recently, but, given that he is a longstanding, experienced member of the House, one would think he would be reasonably up to date and that he would be aware that we have been wanting detail on the continued roll-out of digital. We do not have it yet and it looks like we are never going to get it anyway, because this Minister will run out of time. That is a great shame in a way, because he has been in the job now for the odd few months and we still really do not know what his view of the future is.

I come back now to the bill before us and clauses 1, 2, and 3—particularly the title clause. When Jonathan Coleman was on his feet, the Minister kept saying that this is not about broadcasting. [Interruption] The Minister was saying something along those lines. It is about content and it is about funding content so in that sense it is narrow. But this is the broadcasting environment, and it is obviously an area that New Zealanders who fund the whole industry, in terms of Television New Zealand (TVNZ), and whose money has been poured into that organisation by the millions over the last 9 years, have a very direct interest in what the Minister plans in terms of digital television. Frankly, millions have already gone in, have they not?

Dr Jonathan Coleman: $104 million.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: $104 million has gone in. When we look at the title of the bill—the Broadcasting Amendment Bill—those issues cannot help but come to the forefront of the mind of the Opposition, whose job it is to speak for the public about expenditure and to watch the Government in the way it spends public moneys.

In terms of TVNZ, over the 9 years, sometimes, as I said earlier, that has appeared to be a black hole into which money has been thrown, and the Labour Government does not appear to have been terribly worried about what the New Zealand public has got back for it. [Interruption] No, it is not Labour’s money, but Labour is in Government with a mandate to spend money responsibly. That is, it is not in Government to take money in the way it does, in terms of taxes, but if it is going to take those taxes, then it has to make sure it is accountable for the expenditure of that money. I would say that a television broadcaster that thinks that Police Ten 7 and Location Location Location satisfy the requirement of the Māori component in the charter has totally lost the plot. Indeed the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, actually said the broadcaster had lost the plot. I wonder whether this Minister, the new Minister of Broadcasting, has done any work with TVNZ to make sure it is getting the plot right. That is what National would have liked to hear, and unfortunately we are never going to hear it.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) : I think my colleague Georgina te Heuheu just hit the nail on the head there, because during the Minister’s speech he made a fatal slip. He said that major legislation is going to be following on from this digital review. Now that is quite incredible really, because we have these discussion documents out there at the moment. The Minister and his officials are saying that it is all a blank canvas and they do not know what is going to happen. But it is quite clear that there really is a secret agenda in broadcasting and it is going to be heavy-handed regulation, and the Minister, I am afraid, has let that one out of the bag. We are talking about the title of the Broadcasting Amendment Bill; it sounds like this Minister has a lot he is going to be amending about the broadcasting environment in the months to come. I agree with my colleague Mrs te Heuheu that we should ask why the Minister will not tell us what is really on his mind. Why waste the time of the public, the broadcasters, and the officials, with all this sham consultation process, which we see in a lot of areas this Government puts its sticky beak into, when really it knows what it wants to do all along?

Trevor Mallard knows what he wants to do, because he has a big problem with FreeView. He has a massive problem with it. This has been the Government’s baby. The Government has put $104 million of taxpayers money into FreeView, but it does not know how it will succeed. It is a real issue. The FreeView consortium has a set of television channels, but the figures will plateau because the basic problem is that there is not a lot that people will want to watch on it. So the Minister can either get something on those channels that people want to watch, or he can turn off the normal analog television signal. That will be politically difficult for Mr Mallard, because he does not have a plan for telling people how he will switch off that last group of people who refuse to get into digital television, or how he will convert those people to digital TV.

If we look at the digital TV uptake across New Zealand at the moment, about 800,000 households still need to be switched over. By the Minister’s timetable he has until 2012 to set the date for analog switch-off. That poses a problem, because if 800,000 people do not have digital TV by 2012, there will be 800,000 pretty upset people. Of course, this could all be fiction as far as the Labour Government is concerned, because the chances are that it will not have the responsibility of shepherding all that stuff through.

Trevor Mallard has made an interesting statement, and it would be great if he would take a call on this and explain what he means when he says major legislation will follow on from the digital review. The Minister has had lots of opportunities this afternoon to get up and say something substantial on broadcasting. People are waiting for him to do so. It is no good that he goes around the sector, as he has done, saying: “Well, I’m very busy, I know nothing about broadcasting. I am holding the baby here because Steve Maharey has retired.” That will not work. People want some substance, and Minister Mallard has to lay out his plans. This digital review is already 4 months behind schedule, and why is that? It is because the Minister wants to keep secret this agenda of regulation.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I wanted to read and understand the material before it went out—that’s why.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Does the Minister understand it now?

Hon Trevor Mallard: I think I do.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: OK. Well, the Minister understands it, and I think what the Minister understands is that he will launch—

Jill Pettis: Why isn’t this man out saving lives?

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Why is Mrs Pettis not giving up the waste of space she fills in Parliament and letting in someone to actually rejuvenate this absolutely exhausted Labour caucus? Why is Mrs Pettis not out doing something useful? There is no answer from Mrs Pettis, because there is nothing useful she can do, apart from making those ridiculous comments.

There is a problem that Trevor Mallard has to face up to, because we have a failed broadcasting policy that has been delivered by this Government that has brought Television New Zealand to its knees. There is no plan for how it will recover. The executives there are doing the best they possibly can. Labour has failed on broadcasting.

Labour has a real problem. How will it make FreeView successful? Labour members do not know. They will not tell us. We know they want to legislate. Trevor Mallard is dying to legislate. Frankly, if he had his way he would socialise absolutely everything. He has let the cat out of the bag today. He is smiling and playing the nice guy. He has a big problem now. He has told us there will be major legislation after this digital review. Why, then, is he wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on this review? Why will he waste the time of the hundreds of New Zealanders who will respond to this review, when he already knows the answer? Why does he not just take a call now and say what he wants to do in the whole area of digital regulation?

The answer is that it is because he knows that his secret agenda will be pretty unpalatable. It will make it even harder to bring this failed Government within any hope of re-election. As it is, Labour members have pretty much lost all hope and are giving up on the whole exercise, so they are wondering why they should bother being transparent with this regulatory agenda on broadcasting.

Basically, if the Minister does not bring in his regulatory agenda he has no other way of propping up FreeView. If he cannot get something worth watching on it, or if he does not switch off the analog TV signal, which will be pretty unpalatable for those 800,000 households concerned, his FreeView project will be in big trouble. Basically it will need some innovative thinking, which I think is beyond this Minister. He has admitted he knows nothing about broadcasting and he is not really very interested. He is pretty busy on a lot of other projects and, in fact, he is doing his emails on his BlackBerry now. He is not even really interested in the issues at hand.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Hang on! If you can’t ride two horses, get out of the circus.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Oh, he is not doing his emails—

Hon Trevor Mallard: No, I am doing my emails and listening.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well he knows he is not meant to be doing his emails. He should have his mind on the job, and the job is what will happen in broadcasting. Why does he not tell us about the secret agenda he referred to before when he said there would be regulation after the digital review?

Hon Trevor Mallard: I didn’t.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The Minister did say that but he is now denying it.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I didn’t. I said there would be legislation, not regulation. It’s quite different.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Legislation, regulation—what is the difference? [Interruption] There will be legislation. With this Labour Government, legislation means regulation. Labour members want to laugh it off but the public is on to them. The public is tired of this far-reaching, nanny State regulation we get every time a diehard Labour supporter opens his or her mouth, and people at home had better believe that this is what Labour will be doing in broadcasting. Trevor Mallard wants to bring in a heavy-handed regulatory regime because it is the only chance he has of turning FreeView round.

Look at what Steve Maharey has done to TVNZ. He actually halved its value over the time he held the portfolio, and I reckon that if he had had the portfolio for much longer he would have chomped through the other half of it. It will be very interesting to see what the financial results of Television New Zealand are—very interesting.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Very good at the moment—very good.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The Minister says the results will be very good. That is another slip that we have on the Hansard. We have a lot of material now. Every time the Minister opens his mouth he is digging a grave for himself in broadcasting. I think if the Government had time for a reshuffle before the next election Mr Mallard would be saying: “Can’t I swap this portfolio for the Rugby World Cup one?”. The answer is no—bad news, he will not be able to. He has lost that portfolio. He will have to do his time in broadcasting. It has got pretty tough, but he will have to see it through.

To come back to the title, the Broadcasting Amendment Bill will bring the funding arrangements into line with what is happening out there in terms of the technology. There have been wide-ranging technological changes to broadcasting. Broadcasting now occurs over a variety of media. It is not limited to just radio and television, and the funding arrangements have to reflect that, because New Zealanders are sourcing their content on the Internet, they are watching things downloaded through their mobile phones. New Zealand on Air and Te Māngai Pāho want to be able to reflect that in the way they fund broadcasting. This whole Parliament is supporting this bill, but there are wider issues. The wider issues in broadcasting are regulation, the future of Television New Zealand, and the charter.

• Clause 1 agreed to.

• Clause 2 agreed to.

• Clause 3 agreed to.

• Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : This issue of New Zealand’s building regulations is impacting incredibly negatively on ordinary families, builders, and everybody who is associated with the building industry. From the day that the Building Act 2004 was passed the National Party has said it is a bureaucratic monster.

Today in the House I tabled the 110 pages that the Rodney District Council requires for even the most minor and simple building consent that one could think of. I drew to the attention of the House that the Nelson City Council had put its building consent fees up by 50 percent last week, the Tasman District Council had put its fees up by 35 percent, and the Dunedin City Council had put its fees up by 67 percent. The reason that matters is that it is impacting directly on the price ordinary New Zealanders are trying to pay to get into a home. So when I looked through the Building Amendment Bill, I was hoping and praying that I would see that the Government had seen sense, had realised the problem it had created, and was trying to redress it; what I saw was the Government making it worse. What we have in this bill are more costs being imposed on local authorities and citizens.

Let us look at the first clause in this part, clause 92. I will read it to the Committee. It states that for the purpose of determining the calculation of the levy on building work, the principal Act must be read as if at all times the definition is what it is now. So the Government is saying that for the last 4 years it has been overcharging and it now wants to justify that and make it lawful. I say to the Government that that is not good enough.

You see, the Prime Minister got up in the House at the beginning of the year and said in her statement to Parliament that even she acknowledges that we have created a mad building bureaucracy that is costing too much. I was hoping, a month later, that if we were debating a Building Amendment Bill, it might contain something about that bureaucracy. In fact, this bill does nothing of the sort. So I say to members opposite that if they really believe their rhetoric about home affordability, let us do something about it and let us pull back the mad bureaucracy that was created with the Building Act 2004.

Where are the provisions in this bill to put some constraint on building consent levies? There are none at all. In fact, since the Prime Minister spoke we have seen building consent fees go through the roof. The Reserve Bank this morning had to confirm the second-highest interest rates in the Western World—the second-highest interest rates. What did the Governor of the Reserve Bank identify as one of the biggest inflationary pressures? He identified the Government’s regulatory costs. And right here in the Building Act there are huge increases in the Government’s regulatory costs—in building consent fees. How can the Government tell the building industry—the building suppliers—not to put their fees up too much, when in this part of this bill it is driving up building consent fees? The Government is saying that it is going to put up its fees by 50 percent, but it will get tough on anybody else who puts costs up. Well, the Government is setting an awful precedent by driving up its fees on homes.

I draw the attention of the Committee to what the Commerce Committee found out about building consent fees adding $30,000 of unnecessary bureaucratic costs to the price of a house. That was according to the Registered Master Builders Federation. What does the Government say about that? Jill Pettis is silent now; she does not seem to give a hoot about housing affordability when it comes to daft legislation like this, which will drive up the costs for ordinary New Zealanders to own their own home. The rhetoric of members opposite is hollow. If they were serious about trying to address the issue of home affordability—an issue that is huge for New Zealanders—they would not be passing on these unnecessary additional costs, for which the councils have only two choices: slap them on the rates bill, or put them on to the cost of a building consent. I ask the Minister in the chair, Darren Hughes, what his view is on that. Does he want rates to go up, or does he want to slap more costs on to what first-home buyers have to pay for a house? The Minister in the chair does not give a hoot about the cost for the people of Horowhenua. I know that their building consent fees have gone up by 38 percent, I say to Mr Hughes. How can he stand up and say he defends home affordability, when his own Government’s legislation is driving up the cost of getting a building consent by 38 percent? That is the increase in costs in Mr Hughes’ area, and here he is backing legislation that will only drive those costs higher.

The select committee heard council after council pleading with the Government to see what it is doing to the costs of building regulation, and to look at the accreditation costs it is imposing on them. This bill will allow the bloated bureaucracy of the Department of Building and Housing to dump that cost on the councils, and the councils will have no choice but to dump that cost on either rates or building consent fees. I simply say to the Government that the huge increase in rates and the huge increase in building consent fees are actually part of the problem of home affordability. Until Ministers like Mr Darren Hughes, who has responsibility for this mess, or other members of the Government start to recognise the problem they have created, they are making an awful mess in the building industry.

Let me tell members what is happening. Only yesterday I had people from a building company in my office saying that their builders were so frustrated with the Building Act that they are shooting through to Australia. It is not just because of the lack of income or because of this Government’s high tax policy; it is the bureaucratic laws, like the stupid Building Act, that are sending good tradespeople to Australia. That is a tragedy for New Zealand.

National says that the Building Amendment Bill will not do. It does absolutely nothing to address the issues that are facing thousands and thousands of people who work in that industry. It is doing absolutely nothing to address the issue of home affordability. Since the Building Act 2004 came into being, the result has been a huge increase in the cost of homes. Let me just share the figures from my own electorate. Between the 2001 census and the 2005 census, we saw the biggest drop in homeownership levels in this country since the first census in 1893 asked the question about homeownership. I will say that again. We saw in that census data that over those 5 years there was the biggest drop in homeownership since the 1890s. This bill is part of the problem. What the Government has done with its bureaucratic Department of Building and Housing and its Building Act 2004 is add to the costs, add to the bureaucracy, and add to the delays in building a home in New Zealand.

I just want members of the Government to take some responsibility for the mess they have created. They have accepted that it is a problem. The Prime Minister, in her own statement to Parliament, has said that the costs for building a house are unreasonable. That is what the Prime Minister has said. Well, whose fault is it? It is the Government’s fault because it passed the 2004 Building Act. Darren Hughes, the Minister in the chair, was one of those who voted for the Building Act 2004. My question for him is this: is there anything, any clause, in Part 2 that the Minister can say will address the issue the Prime Minister identified in her statement to Parliament? The truth is there is not one iota. In fact, it will make it worse. This bill is about driving up building costs, making homes unaffordable, and sending good members of the building industry across to Australia because they have had a gutsful of the bureaucracy. It will be a very different building amendment bill that National brings to this House to try to inject some common sense into this important industry.

PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) : I would like to bring some clarity to the issue of where the costs fall when we are talking about the building levies, which have skyrocketed in recent years. They have skyrocketed to support the bureaucracy that has to underpin bills like this Building Amendment Bill that are passed in this Parliament. I would like to read to the House comments from the transcript of the Finance and Expenditure Committee meeting that dealt with the annual financial review of the Department of Building and Housing. This is from the chief executive: “The Building Act activities are funded from the building levies. They are not Crown-funded.” Heatley: “That’s right. So the levy payer essentially pays; it’s not the taxpayer?”. Chief executive: “That’s correct.” Heatley: “How are the levies collected again, roughly?”. Chief executive: “They are collected by the territorial authorities and they are part of the consenting costs.”

So the levies are part of the consenting process. And who pays for the consent? The consent is ultimately paid by the first-home buyer, or in this case the first-home person who is contracting the building work, the building of his or her first home. This is just another bill for those people. So when we talk in Part 2 about the validation in respect of levies on the estimated value of building work, we are talking about the first-home builder, if you like, paying, and it is just another cost on top of all the other costs to do with consenting, particularly the Resource Management Act consent costs, that ultimately the first-home buyer has to foot the bill for.

At that select committee meeting we were astonished to discover the wastage of the building levies that are to be validated here in Part 2. I will give the committee an example of that. It appears that the Department of Building and Housing employed Unisys to develop a computer system that was to record the registration or licensing of builders across this country. Unisys was supposed to develop, for $1.2 million, a system that would record the name, date of birth, and contact details of licensed builders, as well as the registration number, the name of the company, the status and history of the person’s licence, and whether the licence had ever been suspended. Unisys ended up having to set aside all that work—and I will tell members soon how much that work was worth—but the levy payer had paid for all of it. That work is now in the dustbin; Unisys was paid to go away. How much was it paid? It was paid $653,000—$653,000 of building levy costs were thrown at Unisys, and Unisys, in turn, put its work in the dustbin.

But that is not all. Let us wait; there is more! We discovered at that select committee that not only was that work put in the dustbin and $653,000 thrown at Unisys to make it go away but apparently there were more consultants’ costs, advisers’ costs, and project management costs that went along with that discarded project. Believe it or not, we heard from the XACTA Group, which supplied contract staff to assist with documentation and was paid $193,000. Its work is now in the dustbin. AMR Consulting supplied project management and contract staff to assist with the creation of that computer system, and it was paid $127,000 of levy payers’ money. Kensington Swan supplied legal services on options to end the contract with Unisys. So Kensington Swan came in to help to end the contract with Unisys and was paid $54,000 of levy payers’ money. All that added up, believe it or not, to another $646,000.

So on one side Unisys chucked its work on a computer system for the registration of builders in the bin and was paid $653,000 to make it go away, and on the other side all the consultants who supplied support work and legal services, and the suppliers of contract staff and project management were collectively paid $646,000 for the work that eventually ended up in the dustbin.

John Carter: And where did that money come from?

PHIL HEATLEY: Wait a minute—but wait; wait a minute. If we add up both totals, we get a grand sum of over $1.2 million of levy payers’ funds that was chucked in the rubbish tin—

John Carter: Gone in this bin.

PHIL HEATLEY: It has gone in there. There were $1.2 million of levy payers’ funds put in the bin.

We have described where those levy payers’ funds come from. Essentially, they come through the consenting process, and the first-home buyer pays them. First-home buyers in this country have paid $1.2 million for a computer system to register builders—to license builders—but none of it will be used. The Department of Building and Housing, which started with a clean sheet, will go through the process all over again. Yet the Labour Government and the Minister in the chair, the Hon Darren Hughes, are asking this House of Representatives, 121 MPs, to support them in this type of wastage—to support them in billing first-home buyers for $1.2 million that is going nowhere, that is being thrown away—and to support them in more regulation and legislation that actually snows those builders and first-home buyers with more documentation, more regulatory hoops, more plans they have to submit to councils, more forms they have to fill in, and more consultants they have to engage. And on it goes.

Why should this House of Representatives support a Labour Government that has introduced a Building Act that has been amended now—how many times? How many times did my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith say? How many times has this legislation been amended now?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s No. 4.

PHIL HEATLEY: No. 4! The Government has introduced legislation to this House that has needed to be amended four times. Why should this House of Representatives support that, particularly when members see the wastage, and when we see builders rocking up to our offices right across the country to complain about the amount of regulation and red tape they have to deal with? And councils themselves are complaining now. In fact, we had the mayor of the Far North District Council go to see the building Minister. We had the mayor of Whangarei District Council go to the building Minister, and the mayors said themselves that councils have just had enough.

Interestingly, councils cannot even employ enough planners or building inspectors to work through the piles of paper that they need to. They cannot do that, and they are saying that their bureaucracies are growing and they have had enough. Yet this Labour Government has the nerve to come to us cap in hand for the fourth time to fix up its Building Act, when we have, lining up behind us, builders, first-home buyers, councils, and even mayors who tell us not to do this. They say they have had enough—that they want there to be no more paper from Wellington. The councils say they want to streamline themselves and cut the red tape, because they no longer want to pass on the costs to first-home buyers. They see the problem and ask us to please not support this legislation. Is it any wonder that mayors and councils up and down the country are looking to the National Party for solutions and are hearing the right answers?

I am concerned that the Minister in the chair has not stood to address any of the problems that we have put to him today, or last night for that matter, in the debating chamber. Do Government members not care about prospective first home buyers being locked out of buying their first home? Do they not care that homeownership rates are the lowest they have been in this country for 50 years? Do they not care that mortgage interest rates are now going through the roof? Of course, rents are rising as well. We will not support this legislation. Why should we? It is the fourth time.

• Debate interrupted.

Hon MAHARA OKEROA (Minister of State) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): We are on to our 16th speaker, and a motion was put almost 3½ months ago for the question to be put. I am just explaining where we are at. I will go to Bob Clarkson.

BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga) : That is a very good choice. I want the members of this Labour Government to understand that they have reached new heights of bureaucratic failure with this bill and its amendments. Tradesmen carpenters, in most cases, did not cause leaky homes. The main cause of the problem was the Department of Building and Housing telling builders what to do, which turned out to be wrong. How can we blame tradesmen carpenters for using kiln-dried timber, overlaid with Harditex cladding, that had a moisture leakage of 7 percent, when the department said it was OK to do it that way? The Government is now overreacting to the leaky home problem by licensing builders. Tradesmen carpenters will be stuck with paying $2,000 for a licence, not the $300 that the Minister says. [Interruption] We are getting to that. The building of leaky homes was not their fault.

We have had many Ministers for Building and Construction over the last 8½ years. Clayton Cosgrove, the previous reject, was the public relations man and a spin doctor. As I have said before, he woke up one morning with a warm fuzzy feeling and thought that another amendment to the bill was needed. Every bill, or amendment to the bill, does not have a sound base for solving the problems in the building industry. I was looking forward to going head to head with Mr Cosgrove. However, he has been pushed sideways by our friend Helen. Helen got something right.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Full names.

BOB CLARKSON: I apologise if I offended anyone then. I suggest that the Minister—sorry, the previous Minister; it is hard to keep up, there have been so many—keep out of the building area and go back to being a public relations man. He was good at spinning a story, but not at solving building problems.

Let us move on. Shane Jones has been given this job. This is Minister No. 9. I say sorry to Shane but he has been given a hot potato. It can be easily fixed, and it will be fixed by Nick Smith and myself after the next election. We will not have warm fuzzy dreams. We will deal with the cold hard facts and bring in a bill that will fix all the problems. I say to Shane to do his best. There is not long to go until the next election.

The amendment does nothing for the problems. The cost of a house will go up. If a carpenter has to pay for a licence, this cost will go on to a house.

Hon Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member has had over half of his speech time already and we have not heard any reference to the four clauses that this entire part contains. It is just a generic speech on his views, which we have heard dozens of times in his short time in Parliament.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Thank you for raising that. Yes, we should be discussing those four clauses. There will be plenty of opportunity in the next three questions to roam all over the place and to summarise everything we have been doing for the last 4 months on this issue. If the member could confine himself please to those clauses in Part 2.

BOB CLARKSON: I thought in actual fact that I was referring to them, in the sense of the cost of levies and all that sort of stuff, and so forth.

This bill and the amendments have nothing to do with, and will not help cut, costs of council fees, building levies, and all that sort of stuff. The councils are running scared. Builders are acting like stunned mullets. Builders will go broke because they cannot get permits because it is a long-winded process. Where are we headed? I say to New Zealanders to be patient, there is an election coming; Nick Smith and “Bob the Builder” will solve their problems. They will be able to sit in the front of a bus and see where they are going, not in the back to see where they have been.

JILL PETTIS (Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): There will be one debate on clauses 1, 2, and 3, with three questions.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : In beginning the debate on clauses 1, 2, and 3, I want to draw attention to the statement made by the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Alan Bollard, this morning. In saying that New Zealanders would not see any decline in their interest rates, he said that cost increases in the non-tradable sector are providing inflationary pressures, which means that there can be no room for relaxing the cash rate. One may ask what that has to do with this bill. It has everything to do with this bill, because we have seen that the Government’s Building Act is adding to those exact same inflationary pressures in the non-tradable sector—basically, Government charges—that are resulting in high inflation, which is impacting on ordinary New Zealanders.

How will it impact? There are 230,000 New Zealanders whose mortgages come up for renewal this year. The Reserve Bank governor’s message today means that those families will face increases in their interest rates as the banks roll those mortgages over. Those 230,000 families will be facing the second-highest interest rates in the developed world, because this incompetent Government keeps driving up the regulatory costs on areas like building. I say to the Government members opposite that it is time they did something for those mortgage-belt families. It is time that the Government recognised that its Building Act 2004 is a major problem. It has resulted in huge increases in cost. It has resulted in huge increases in bureaucracy.

Let me just go through some of the areas where the Building Act is driving up costs. Firstly, let us look at consent costs. Today in the House I have outlined all of the councils that have had to increase their building consent fees because of the provisions in this bill. The Nelson City Council has increased its fees by 50 percent, the Tasman District Council has increased them by 35 percent, and the Dunedin City Council has increased them by 67 percent. Those increases have been made in 1 year. How can a Government that is driving a strategy around housing affordability then pass a Building Act that is driving up costs to that sort of order?

That is just one area. The development levies, which were driven through on to the councils, have trebled under this Government. They have gone from an average level of $8,000 per section, to $25,000 per section. When the Government introduced them, it said that it would sock the big, rich, fat developers with a development levy. Well, only the fools on the other side of the Chamber would believe that it is actually the developer who pays the development levies. The levies are just passed on to the price of the section or the house, and that is one of the reasons why section prices have more than doubled over the last 5 years. Can members believe that it costs more to buy a section today than it did to buy a house when Labour came into Government? A section today costs more than a house cost when Labour came into Government.

National’s frustration with this Building Amendment Bill is that there is absolutely nothing in it, at all, to address the crisis in house affordability—nothing at all. When we see the crocodile tears from the Minister of Housing, Maryan Street, and when we hear the words from the Prime Minister—

Hon Darren Hughes: The next member for Nelson.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh, Darren Hughes, is saying that, somehow, Maryan Street will be the next member for Nelson. Well, I will tell the Minister why she will not be. A week after she came to Nelson and talked about home affordability, the council had to lift building fees by 50 percent. In the Tasman District, we have had a 35 percent increase in building fees. Then we have Maryan Street’s Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill. Do members know what the Nelson City Council says about it in today’s newspaper? It says it is the worst bill—the worst bill—to address housing affordability. My council, the Nelson City Council, is apolitical. It is apolitical. And here is my own council saying that Maryan Street’s bill is a dog—a dog! [Interruption] I say to Darren Hughes that the words of the Nelson City Council are mild compared with what the Tasman District Council is saying about that bill. That council is referring to it as a joke—a sick, cynical trick on the people of New Zealand. I am pleased Darren Hughes is waving goodbye, because we in this Chamber all know that Nathan Guy will clean him up in that electorate because of the sorts of dopey policies we see in this Building Amendment Bill.

JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) : I am pleased to take a call on the title of the Building Amendment Bill. There are two or three things I want to say. The first is: fancy putting as the Minister in the chair on something to do with housing someone who does not own a house. Fancy putting in someone who does not even know what homeownership is like. The fact is, I do not think he has even owned a doll’s house, let alone his own house. This person in the chair does not understand what it is like for the people in “Struggle Street’ who are trying to get their own house.

The second point I make is that my colleagues today—Nick Smith, Phil Heatley, and others who have spoken—have talked about the costs of building levies and other costs associated with the local authorities.

Russell Fairbrother: What would you do about it?

JOHN CARTER: I would do a lot more than that member, who is going out as well. People worry about the fact that the councils are putting their fees up. Nick Smith has explained the fees that have gone up in the various councils. Let me just clarify. Why are those councils putting the fees up? Let me tell the Committee why that happens. The councils have to match the bureaucracy that the Government has established by making rules and regulations. The Government then imposes those costs and the rules and regulations on to the councils, which have to respond to them. The building industry, the builder, the architect, and the actual suppliers have to respond to these costs. So there are extra costs loaded in, right across. It is now estimated that compliance costs in total—if we take in not just the building fees and levy contributions but all the costs associated with the bureaucracy—are probably as much as $50,000 a section for the red-tape side of it.

That is an absolute disgrace. That figure is an estimate at this stage, but up to $50,000 could be loaded into the building costs per house development because of this Government’s rules. The sad fact is that the councils are merely responding to the responsibilities that this Government has put on to them. It is known that bureaucracy in the local authorities has grown more than 25 percent since Labour came to Government, because the local authorities have had more and more costs imposed on them. The local authorities have to respond; they do not have a choice. They have to respond to what the Government imposes on them, and the consequence is more costs, more red tape, and more bureaucracy.

Even worse is that the Government members could stand here and say they have had to do all this to get over the problem with leaky homes, and if this were going to fix the problem, maybe they would have that excuse—not that it would be acceptable to the Opposition, but nevertheless. But the sad fact is that, right now, not only is the issue of the leaky homes that we know about not being addressed but actually we are building more leaky homes in this country. If people in this Chamber and people in this Committee think that we have solved the leaky home problems, they should think again.

David Bennett: Labour’s leaky homes.

JOHN CARTER: My colleagues have to believe it. The sad fact is that is there are more and more leaky homes being built. Right now there are leaky homes being built in this country. Poor, unsuspecting homeowners are buying spec homes that look good and feel good. Sadly for them, in the next 5 or 10 years and longer they will find that that new home they bought today, built under the Government regulations, is leaky. The Department of Building and Housing has grown from a staff equivalent to 31.5 people, to one of over 385. There are 385 bureaucrats in there, most of them with little experience in the building industry itself. Some of them are good people, but a lot of them have no idea about building. They know how to write rules and regulations. The sad fact is that this bill and this Minister and that department are doing nothing to address the issue this bill is supposedly all about.

That is why the Opposition will fight and rally against this, led by my good friend and colleague Nick Smith, by Phil Heatley, and by others in this Chamber. We will fight this every inch of the way, because it is doing a disservice to a whole lot of New Zealanders.

There are many people in this country who would love to have the opportunity to own their own home. There are many people in this country who would love to have confidence that the home they buy, whether it be their first, their second, or their retirement home, is secure and that the money they put into it is an asset to them. They would love to be assured that the Government has got it right. They would love to know that the council has got it right. They would love to know that the people they have relied on to ensure the house is secure can guarantee that the house is going to last. Sadly, that does not happen. There are far too many people in this country who are going to be let down because this Government has no idea what it is doing.

It was yesterday or today that my colleague Nick Smith brought in the building consent application that one has to fill in for the Rodney District Council.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: 110 pages.

JOHN CARTER: He brought in 110 pages of forms that one has to fill in just to apply for a building consent. This is just the application, folks. That is not the largest local authority in New Zealand either, so we can imagine the sizes of some of the other applications. Once that has been filled out, the plans, the architect designs, and the specifications about the materials to be used have to be attached. It just goes on and on. When I was listening to my colleague Nick Smith speak I was thinking that the sad fact is that all the building applications that are made in this country—the pile of papers and all the papers that are associated with them—would in my guess, over a year, be the equivalent of about 10 houses if we had left them as wood rather than paper. We could have given 10 houses away, made the houses secure, and given people something they owned and respected. Instead, all this Government is giving them is a whole lot of paper and form-filling. We could have given a house to Darren Hughes. Everybody would have been better off.

But sadly, we have a Government that insists on bureaucracy, control, hands-on, form filling, and a whole lot of rhetoric that does nothing at all. The Minister Shane Jones is going around listening and learning. He hears the various things that Nick Smith has talked about. He hears the very thing Phil Heatley talks about; that is, builders who are good, competent people who have got to the stage where they are saying “We are out of here. We have had enough of this form-filling. We cannot guarantee, with all the paper and all the specifications and all the materials we have to supply, that we can do a proper job for people who expect us to.”

These are good, long-serving, competent homebuilders. These people know their job. They know what it is like to build a house. They know what it is like to have an asset. They know what it is like to carry the responsibility, but, sadly, this Government will not listen to those people who actually understand. This Government will not listen to people who could actually tell them how to solve the problem. The one good piece of news is that Nick Smith, Phil Heatley, Bob Clarkson, myself, and others working in the team have an answer. We know how to fix this problem. Hang on folks, help is on its way. It is all going to be fixed in due course. The policies we are developing are going to take a lot of this right out so that people will be able to get to the stage where they can invest with security and they can own their own home.

• Progress to be reported presently.

• House resumed.

• The Chairperson reported the Limited Partnerships Bill with amendment, and that the Committee had divided it into two bills, reported the Broadcasting Amendment Bill with amendment, and progress on the Building Amendment Bill.

• Report adopted.