Water Services Entities Bill

Ata mārie. The House is resumed for the extended sitting.

I present a legislative statement on the Water Services Entities Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I move, That the Water Services Entities Bill be now read a third time.

Ka tū he manawa ā-rangi, ka tū he manawa ā-whenua, ka tū he manawa a ngā wai katoa hei ākina kumu mō Hine-Tapu-i-te-Papa. Awhitia paitia ia, āwhitia purutia te mana, te mauri, te tapu, haumi e, hui e, taiki e.

[A spring in the sky, a spring on earth, indeed there is spring of all water that acts as a seat for The Sacred-Maiden-of-the-Land. Care for her, and care for the mana, the mauri, the tapu, bind it tightly. All in agreeance.]

I am pleased to reach this point in a significant set of decisions that will prepare New Zealand for a better future for looking after our most precious resource, ngā wai—water—people, communities and our environment. We cannot have a future in a country like ours where boil water notices in communities like Te Kao happen; where no swim notices at local beach spots, like Auckland, happen; where burst pipes, like what we’ve seen in our capital city, happen; where seeping sewage into our pristine lakes, like Lake Taupō, happens; and where waste-water spills are frequently experienced after heavy weather events across many communities—it plagues our headlines.

In a country like ours, this is just not good enough, so we’re going to take action, do the right thing, and fix a problem that has been left to languish for the last two decades. New Zealand is facing a cost of living crisis. It is vital that we keep a lid on rates rises. The approach we’re taking will make a more affordable solution for ratepayers going forward into the future to support the financing of water infrastructure and improve water services.

I find it disingenuous of the Opposition to talk about a cost of living crisis and in the same breath promise to repeal this legislation. We know that if we do nothing, the significant cost of fixing this mess of water infrastructure will fall on future ratepayers—our kids, your kids, and the next generation. We know that New Zealanders can’t afford that. I want the burden to fall on our kids. Do you?

This is the third time I’ve stood to support this bill in this House, and yet I don’t find myself short of statistics backing up the need to significantly change the way that water is managed in New Zealand. Just this morning, we heard of the water contamination issues in Waimate. Just last week in the Matamata-Piako district, we heard of a community on a boil water notice, and they are not isolated events. But, sadly, no one is outraged because it’s a common experience and all communities want the problem to be fixed. In one six-week period, Taumata Arowai received 209 notifications from water suppliers that their water was not, or may not be, compliant with the drinking-water standards, including from 31 different councils.

Now, I understand that there are those who want to believe nothing is wrong with our water network, but, sadly, all too often—because we’re talking for the most part about pipes under the ground—this critical infrastructure is out of sight and out of mind. It is not until something goes wrong that people realise just how big the problem is. Pipes across the country are in such bad condition that in 2020 and 2021 over 107 million cubic metres of water was lost due to pipe leaks. That is more than a fifth of all water supplied in New Zealand and is equivalent to the volume of water supplied to Hamilton, Rotorua, Dunedin, and Christchurch combined. Climate change forces us to treat water as a precious resource. We cannot waste it.

I have not spoken about how, following its 2016-17 local government audits, the Office of the Auditor-General reported that relevant and reliable information about water assets was a challenge for territorial authorities, and that 45 percent of potable and waste water networks and 52 percent of stormwater networks are categorised as ungraded. In a country like ours, how can that be? In other words, there is a lot we do not know about the quality of our water infrastructure in this country, but what we do know makes for some dire reading. Unlike the Opposition, we will not bury our heads in the sand or kick the can down the road. Their alternative is to repeal the most viable solution on the table, and, quite frankly, we don’t need National and ACT to gaslight issues like co-governance—which, in this instance, is really about joint decision-making—or whitewashing issues such as ownership when they know very well that councils will continue to collectively own water assets under this model. The Opposition want to repeal the only solution on the table and take New Zealand back to the status quo, which is not a solution. In fact, repeal, repeal, repeal is not a solution.

In the time since I introduced this bill into the House, the situation has changed. I want to take some time to address the concerns people have about this bill. People have said that having a few large entities inevitably mean less community voice and influence over water services, but we know that having any more entities will result in unequitable outcomes for ratepayers, and increased costs. Four entities will ensure that costs and levels of service are equitable across the country. I don’t want to see residents in Northland, the West Coast, Otago, and Southland paying significantly more for their water services while receiving, actually, the worst service under the current model. But that is what the modelling shows will happen if we have more than four entities, which is what that side of the House wants.

To address concerns about the loss of community voice, we established a working group on representation, governance, and accountability. They did a significant amount of work to improve local voice, and this was strengthened through the select committee process, and I thank the members on the committee. I make this promise to New Zealanders: public ownership is and remains a bottom line for the Government, and you will still have the same influence over your water services once this bill passes.

There was some concern the entities would be less accountable to the public than local government. My officials undertook significant work with the Office of the Auditor-General during the select committee process to improve the accountability mechanisms in the bill. The Auditor-General has confirmed that the current bill will provide for stronger and more effective public accountability over water services delivered to New Zealanders than when the bill was introduced. I want to thank the Office of the Auditor-General for their constructive contribution to this work.

Another claim is that the reform will lead to higher costs for consumers. This is unsubstantiated and, quite frankly, untrue. We know that if we do not proceed with this reform, costs will go up to levels that are unsustainable for New Zealanders. We know this because extensive economic modelling has been undertaken and peer-reviewed by world-leading experts. Ours is a Government that will not watch rates spiral out of control when we know something can be done, and we’re going to do it.

There have been claims that the Government is stealing assets, but assets will continue to be owned by the communities who currently own them. We have ensured their continued public ownership by embedding significant protections against privatisation in this bill, unlike the Opposition or the ACT Party. We don’t need to look very far into the past to understand why protections are so important. The previous National-ACT Government sold off and privatised many publicly owned assets. This Government is 100 percent committed to ensuring our water assets—

SPEAKER: Order! I don’t want to hear applause. The volume of interjections is far too loud and I want—

Matt Doocey: Clapping was a good joke.

SPEAKER: I’m on my feet, so Matt Doocey will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Matt Doocey: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: As I say, this Government is 100 percent committed to ensuring our water assets remain in public ownership, and we call on the Opposition to make the same commitment to New Zealanders. [Interruption] Oh, they will not. I would like to thank everyone that has engaged in the passage of this bill—the submitters, councils, mana whenua across the country, the Finance and Expenditure Committee members, amongst others, and also officials from the Department of Internal Affairs, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. Your contributions have resulted in significant improvements to this bill.

The Opposition likes to stand in this House and ask Ministers whether we stand by our statements and actions. I do—every one of them. I stand by the decision to undertake this reform. I stand by the financial modelling which has led us to this point. I stand by the entities this bill establishes. I stand by the fact that we are looking for solutions, not a repeal, cancel culture. I stand by all those things because I will not stand by and watch New Zealanders face thousands of dollars in rates hikes if we do nothing. I will not stand by while New Zealanders continue to get sick from drinking tap water—tap water—and our tamariki cannot safely swim at their local beach, rivers, or lakes. I will not stand by and see our cities and towns stall because they cannot pay for vital infrastructure that they require to grow.

This is a Government that will not stand by and let this problem languish. It’s been kicked down the road by the other side for far too long. We’ve got to do something about it, and this bill will improve the future. I’m pleased to commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I rise on behalf of the National Party as the member of Parliament for North Shore and their local government spokesperson, at the third reading of the Water Services Entities Bill. National strongly opposes this bill. National will repeal and replace this bill if elected in 2023.

The bill gives effect to the Government’s three-waters reforms and establishes the four-entities model for water services management. This is part of a series of bills of which we will see economic regulation and asset transfer bills follow through and introduced in 2023. Be under no illusion: this is not the last time you will hear of three waters. Today, the Government, unless they make a mistake, will use its majority to pass this bill, one of the most controversial aspects of public policy in this term of Government—controversial because over 88,000 people made a submission on this bill, the majority in opposition. This overwhelming opposition is further evidenced by multiple public polls. The latest published poll, just a few weeks ago, said 60 percent of Kiwis are opposed, while less than one in five—just 19 percent—supports it.

It is important to acknowledge that most mayors and councils across this country support the need for reform, to improve water infrastructure, but strongly oppose this bill as a means to achieve those ends. National believes, alongside our local communities, that water services in New Zealand should be safe, resilient, reliable, and customer responsive at least cost. This will lead to, and we need to focus on, fixing problems where they exist. This is what a National-led Government will do and deliver for New Zealanders. The National Party has developed an alternative solution and will continue to develop this New Zealand water infrastructure solution. It will replace this bill. Our solution will achieve the desired outcomes for our communities without the loss of control and complexity that this Labour water services entities model brings.

The Government has engaged in a deceptive media campaign that has blamed local councils for the issues with New Zealand’s water quality, spending millions of dollars of taxpayer funds on spin and nothing on delivery. Water assets should remain in local community control and ownership, and governed by democratically accountable individuals. This is a bottom line for National. Under these reforms, communities will no longer own their assets. As detailed in clause 166, territorial authorities possess none of their usual rights and responsibilities associated with ownership of assets. This lack of ownership is particularly concerning for communities that have paid for their assets over generations and generations and prefer the ownership to be vested in democratically accountable authorities.

Water assets should, also, not be subject to 50:50 co-governance. Removal of co-governance from public services is a bottom line for National. The bill contains co-governance at every level of representation—both representative boards and regional authority groups—which have equal sets of mana whenua and territorial authorities around the table. The National Party believes that co-governance of public services like water does not improve service delivery and cannot be justified otherwise. National recognises the role of mana whenua as a group alongside others with views on water, and with some interests in cultural assets previously expressed in the Treaty settlement process.

Submitters provided a number of viable alternative models. Communities 4 Local Democracy, a group that represents over 30 councils, presented an independently reviewed alternative model. The mayors of Auckland, Christchurch, and Waimakariri have presented an alternative model. Auckland has the Watercare council-controlled organisation (CCO) model, and some councils, including Hawke’s Bay, have tabled alternative CCO models. These models show you can match the capital expenditure of Labour’s reforms and keep assets in local ownership without raising water prices and council debt limits. Still, the Government has ignored, and continues to ignore, this and says that no alternative options or models exist. This is simply not accurate. The shape of the bill and the bottom lines of this Government, which restricted it to four co-governed mega entities, have meant that consideration of alternative models has not been possible during the committee stage.

This bill now also includes five waters—geothermal and coastal waters—for the purpose of Te Mana o te Wai, giving iwi binding powers over these waters, through the water services entities; iwi alone. This was a late amendment and was not part of the select committee process, in which public submissions could have been received on that aspect. That is another example of this Government ramming through amendments at a late stage and not listening to New Zealanders. The National Party had tabled an amendment to have these provisions for Te Mana o te Wai extended to all New Zealanders, yet these were voted down by Labour in the committee of the whole House stage.

And, in the last week, Labour was caught red-handed trying to entrench part of the bill, which has forced them as a party into an embarrassing backtrack. This was supported by Labour and the Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, despite Cabinet agreeing on 30 May that no part of the bill would be entrenched and knowing this amendment would be “a novel approach” and not meeting—and I quote—“constitutional thresholds”. This action has given insight into the inner thinking of parts of the Labour caucus: a willingness to dangerously try to change our democracy for their own means. National has called for the Prime Minister to remove her local government Minister for this deliberate violation of the Cabinet Manual. “Who is running the Labour Cabinet?”, you may ask. The Prime Minister refused to go into how this has happened. That leaves her and the Government wide open to accusations that this was a deliberate move—that they wanted to undertake this entrenchment, that they got found out, and that this mistake was not a policy mistake, it was a political one.

The three waters reform assumes that the new mega entities will be able to achieve 62 percent operational efficiency, without any reduction in headcount, and a 50 percent capital spend efficiency compared to existing systems. This is not possible. Independent assessments have noted the economies of scale and capital spend are not available in New Zealand water services. There are issues with water infrastructure management that this bill has said it is going to try to attempt. Given the existence of Taumata Arowai as the water quality regulator, which has already been established, it is our belief that a number of issues around water quality will be resolved through this governance model—in addition, with appropriately targeted funding and financing mechanisms. Three waters has attracted a storm of controversy because this bill, right from the start, was dead in the water. Before it even started, this Government set out, right from the outset, with bottom lines within this reform that they did not have a willingness to change.

I want to speak directly to all those people who work in local government across this country who are involved with the delivery of water infrastructure. The next 12 months will be unsettling and challenging but be forewarned: National will repeal this bill, undo the other statutory amendments, and dissolve any obligations created by this bill in regards to employment funding and financing. National will work with you, not against you, to implement a sustainable water model—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I deliberately waited to the end of the speech out of courtesy to the member, but I just wanted to ask for clarification around Speakers’ Ruling 128/5 and the definition of a passing reference to debate on Supplementary Order Papers which were resolved the committee stage.

I contemplated interrupting the member—actually, not particularly on that. Members can mention that in passing, but that was quite a detailed passing comment is what I’d say. The issue that I was going to raise was the inferences made from it. In the end, I decided not to, but it’s a general warning. I know this is a controversial issue, and I will listen very carefully. I’m obviously going to give some latitude on the extensive debate so far, but that’s not a licence for members to break the rules.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: It’s not going away, Kieran.

SPEAKER: Who was that? No. One could describe that immediately after a ruling as a comment on the ruling. You shouldn’t do it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Water Services Entities Bill. There are many times in this House where one prepares a speech, and this is one of the times where I didn’t prepare a speech. It is easy for me to be able to sit at my desk, write a 10-minute speech, have a good read of it, and basically push out the slogans that we’ve heard time and time and time again in this House in relation to this bill. But I’m not going to be speaking about the slogans that are being sent from across the other side of the House. Instead, I’m going to stand here and go back to why we need this bill.

I was speaking to the chairman of our local iwi, who was basically talking about how the nannies used to be able to go down to our local harbour, used to be able to pick pipis, used to be able to fish, used to be able to swim in those waters. I talk a lot within my local community about, only 500 metres from my home, a local beach which has regular discharge of sewage—regular discharge of sewage. That CEO and chairman of that iwi sent me a text and said to me to go hard in relation to this bill. He said, “Just remember: it’s not just about assets; it’s about people.” And that’s exactly what this bill is about—it’s about providing our children and our children’s children an ability to go down to their local harbour, to pick pipis from the harbour, to fish in it, and to be able to swim.

The member from the opposite side of the House, Simon Watts, represents the North Shore, the area that I was brought up in. You can’t even go down to the local beach to swim in those beaches. And what do you say is the solution to your local community in Takapuna? What is the solution? Went through one solution from the communities for local democracy, went through another solution from another local council, went through a solution from the Auckland City Council and a couple of other mayors. Talked about a solution on the other side of the House, but there was still no alternative from the other side of the House. There was nothing in that speech that actually committed to what they were going to do other than to repeal a bill, which leaves them with absolutely nothing.

Now, I want to go to the people. The health of our people is so important. So, Mr Speaker, if you’ll indulge me, I want to quote a really important article from the New Zealand Medical Journal that was released last week. It says, “In 2016, drinking water contaminated with animal faeces made much of an entire town sick … with 58 hospitalisations and four deaths, costing an estimated NZ$21 million.” The outbreak was an outcome of systematic flaws in Aotearoa New Zealand’s regulatory system for drinking water, which were highlighted in the ensuing Government inquiry.

Now, these medical professionals conclude this very detailed New Zealand Medical Journal article by saying that “Good quality drinking water that is free of hazardous contaminants is a fundamental human right and a key element of the Sustainable Development Goals. … Water contamination in New Zealand has had severe consequences for human health and is an ongoing public health threat. … Consequences are borne disproportionately by smaller and the most deprived communities, with Māori disproportionately comprising the latter. The current regulatory arrangements for water services are inadequate, are economically unsustainable, and are inefficient. The amalgamation proposed in the Water Services Entities Bill provides an opportunity to resolve previous systemic flaws outlined in the Government Inquiry into Havelock North and to future proof the country’s Three Waters. Most importantly, the proposed new legislation is likely to more robustly, and efficiently, improve the protection of public health and uphold the right to clean, safe water.”

The other side of the House may not agree with those medical experts, but councils across the country absolutely agree there is a problem that needs to be solved. We have a solution on this side of the House that is in the bill, which provides for new entities that are still owned by the taxpayers of New Zealand—still owned by the taxpayers of New Zealand, with some safeguards in there to ensure that if, for any reason, these entities decide to sell them overseas, there are strong safeguards in that bill. They’re the same safeguards that apply today to local government assets. Anybody who picks up that bill and actually reads it—takes the time to go through it clause by clause, as the Finance and Expenditure Committee members from the Labour Party and the Green Party did—will understand why you have to support this bill. Because, again, the bottom line is the health of the people of our country. We cannot kick this problem down to future generations. We cannot let our children have to have higher rates as a result of doing nothing.

We heard a number of submitters, and, yes, a number of them were not in agreement with the bill in the way that it was structured. However, the experts said that if we don’t do anything about this, the increases in rates were disproportionate. It was already disproportionate in how much people were paying in rates for the water services that we were receiving. But what was going to happen was a $185 billion problem, and, if you kick that problem down the road, who is going to pay for it? Again, it is our future generations.

Members across the House might want to be able to interject and provide different options to that—take a speech, take your time, but, actually, maybe use your speeches for what the solution is that you’d actually provide, other than repealing this bill. Provide the solution, but, in the meantime, this is a Government that is making hard decisions for the future of our children and our children’s children. We want our children to be able to go down to the local harbour to pick pipis and fish. We want them to be able to walk along the beach and have a swim in the sea. We want them to be able to turn on the tap water and be able to drink from it. Too many boil notices, and too many sewage discharges—unaffordable. That is basically what this bill is trying to address. I want to leave the House with one last quote from a submitter who came to Hawke’s Bay, who actually experienced the Hawke’s Bay contamination. She said, “The Three Waters’ reform is looking to do the right thing for communities. It’s looking at health and science, and putting it in the hands of experts. It’s taking it out of the hands of the politicians. We have a problem, New Zealand, and this bill is going to solve it.”

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. This Water Services Entities Bill has been a debacle for the Government from start to finish. I want to make very clear for the House that the National Party will campaign at the next election in a year or so’s time on repealing and replacing this legislation, and if we win the election we will consider ourselves to have a mandate to repeal and replace, and we will do so forthwith. Because the Government’s position is that it’s their way or the highway; that there’s a problem with water infrastructure in New Zealand and they’ve got the solution. And right the way through they have been unwilling to listen to the voices of communities around the country, the voices of local councils, the voices of local authorities, the voices of local ratepayers who’ve said, “Yep, we acknowledge there’s a problem, we’re up for a solution, we just don’t like what you as a Government are proposing.” There’s no dispute that we need to upgrade water infrastructure in this country. There’s no disagreement about that. What there is a disagreement about is this legislated all-in solution that confiscates local assets and puts them into four unaccountable mega-entities with 50:50 co-governance that gives extraordinary powers to mana whenua through Te Mana o te Wai statements to control those entities.

And right from the start the Government has been unwilling to buckle on its bottom lines. They’ve been unwilling to change their minds about the four mega-entities, they’ve been unwilling to change their minds about the 50:50 co-governance proposals, and they’ve been unwilling to change their mind about local accountably. Because this is the tragedy of the whole situation—there’s a third way through here. It does not need to be the Government’s dumb solution. There is a pathway here. There are people of good faith in local communities around the country, people of good conscience and good faith who want to do the right thing for New Zealand. And, actually, I believe there’s a consensus in the Parliament around that. But the Government has used its arrogant, absolute majority gifted to them in the 2020 election to ram this through.

Let’s run through the stuff-up. First of all, the media campaign right from the start—what a shemozzle. The Government spent all its time telling local councils they were useless. That led to an upsurge of anger in local communities. Then we had the voluntary option: councils thought they were going to be able to come to some sort of consensus with the Government. In fact, some still hold that hope, and we had to go through the charade of the Government saying, “Yep, we’re open to that”, and as it turned out they had already agreed, as my colleague Simon Watts found out and demonstrated to the House—in October 2021 the Government said, “No, no, it has to be mandatory. We have to legislate. We have to go all in”. Councils felt betrayed. Communities felt betrayed, because they thought they were dealing with a Government that was open to change and open to some form of consensus. Turns out they weren’t. Then we had the refusal to listen: 88,000 people submitted to the select committee process. Just 227 submissions were heard—

Maureen Pugh: Selected.

CHRIS BISHOP: Selected to be heard. Now, I sat on the Justice Committee when we did the euthanasia legislation, the End of Life Choice Bill—equally highly contentious. We went up and down the country. I went to Gisborne—oh, not Gisborne, sorry, I went to Napier, I went to Blenheim, I went to Whanganui, I went all over the show, and we went around the country to try and listen to people, let them ventilate their concerns. And I actually think that helped navigate the Parliament through a very contentious process. But no, no, no, the Finance and Expenditure Committee did not do that. I think that was a mistake. And then we get to the entrenchment debacle of last week, of which no more need be said. But what a shambles.

What are the five objectionable bits in this legislation? First of all is the confiscation of local assets, and the Government scoffs and says “Oh no, no, no”, but that is just the reality. There is no getting around that. It’s in the legislation. The legislation takes assets that have been built up by ratepayers over many years, takes them off local council hands, and gives them to these new four water service entities, which are a new creation. The legislation creates these new bodies. These are bodies that have not been seen in legislation before. They are created by the bill. They’re a completely new corporate entity—and I use corporate in its most general sense—created by the legislation. These are new entities and they will own the water assets; that is as simple as that. And the traditional rights of ownership—as has been extensively ventilated in the public commentary and in this House—do not go with local councils. It is a Claytons form of ownership: it is not ownership. So it is a confiscation, and that is how local councils and local communities see it, and they are right.

The second point: the accountability of these new entities, these new water service entities, four of them—just four—around the country, they will be less accountable than what we have now. And again, it is very difficult to dispute this because the Auditor-General—who doesn’t have a dog in this fight; he’s the independent officer of Parliament whose job it is to examine these things, turned up at the committee and gave a scathing submission to the Water Services Entities Bill about how they will be unaccountable. And the select committee has made no substantive changes to fix that lack of accountability, and, again, communities around the country know this.

Thirdly, 50:50 co-governance. The community has made it clear what they think about this and they have rejected it. But the Government refuses to buckle. Now—

Hon Peeni Henare: Māori are part of the community.

CHRIS BISHOP: Māori, of course, are part of the community, and I’m just about to say, the Hon Peeni Henare, do Māori have rights and interests in water? Absolutely they do. The Crown accepted that in the Supreme Court case that led to the mixed-ownership model. There was a judicial review, there was a court case to try and stymie that, and the Crown accepted and it’s in accordance with longstanding policy that Māori have rights and interests in water. That was the position of the last National Government 10 years ago, and it remains the position of the National Party today. But does the acceptance that Māori have rights and interests in water—legitimate rights and interests—mean that we have to have a 50:50 co-governance proposal? It does not. Does it mean that only mana whenua can issue Te Mana o te Wai statements that the water services entities have to give effect to? In our considered view, that is not what that acceptance of Māori rights and interests requires. Our view is that it will lead to discord and disharmony and you are seeing that in communities around the country.

So that’s the third objectionable proposal, and the fourth is the exclusivity of Te Mana o te Wai statements. Now, let’s be really clear: the legislation obliges the new water services entities to give effect to these statements. These are broad and unbridled statements. The breadth of what these statements can contain is enormous. The entities will have to pay mana whenua to participate in this process to give effect to them. There is nothing in the bill around how these statements will be reconciled. If there are different iwi and different groupings that put these Te Mana o te Wai statements to the water services entities bill, there is nothing in the legislation—we’ve had no guidance from the Government so far—about how they will be reconciled. We may well end up in a situation where there are differing statements that have completely irreconcilable objectives and there are, according to Te Puni Kōkiri, 1,200 iwi around the country who could potentially issue these statements to these new water services entities. So the potential for chaos is very, very real.

Fifth point: the “five waters”, not the “three”. Because this is not actually the three waters bill any more; the water services is now five and the select committee extended the scope of the bill out to geothermal water and coastal water. And we are yet to hear an adequate explanation from the Government as to why that is the case and what exactly the rationale for that is.

I finish by dealing with this privatisation furphy that the Government insists on talking about. The only people talking about privatisation of water assets are the Labour Party and the Green Party. They’re the only people talking about it. What the Government is doing is taking assets off councils and giving them to water services entities—so in other words, outside of local council control, and then using the private debt markets through balance-sheet separation to fund them. So who’s the people dealing with private money and private capital and private ownership here? It’s certainly not the National Party. So we need to put this furphy of privatisation to bed. National opposes this legislation. We will repeal and replace it.

I will never forget the day during the Havelock North water crisis where I met a family in Camberley where a young boy was suffering from severe eczema completely covering his body, simply from having a shower in his home where, unaware, he hadn’t been told, nor his family been told, that the Hastings District Council was having to pump and pump and pump chlorine into the water to try and protect our community from a campylobacter outbreak so severe that between 6,000 and 8,000 people across the community got sick, nearly a thousand people went to the doctor about the suffering that they were having, 58 people were hospitalised, and it caused four deaths. Nor will I forget the hours that my young daughter screamed in agony from vomiting so severely that I rang for urgent medical treatment, only to be told that they thought it was a tummy bug—little did I know that she was one of the first of, as I said, thousands to get sick.

As the MP for Tukituki, I know that the ratepayers and residents of Hastings have paid severely from a lack of investment in our water infrastructure where the council ignored warnings after warnings to invest in the infrastructure but instead chose to keep rates low. The economic cost to the community was $21 million from that Havelock North water crisis, and all they got from the National Government was $100,000 to help Havelock North re-market itself.

Hon Member: That’s their funding model, is it?

ANNA LORCK: That was their funding model. No local in National; no care for the local community.

Hastings and Havelock North have been the catalyst for this bill, but we are also an example of the future, because next year we will finally turn the tap on our new drinking-water system, that will supply over 65,000 people with a world-class drinking-water infrastructure. Now, I want to make clear to the ratepayers of Hastings that you have not already paid for fixing this but borrowed $82 million, and now another $8.7 million on top of the $15 million this Government gave towards fixing that water infrastructure. Under this bill, that loan will be transferred to the water entity and the debt wiped off the Hastings District Council balance sheet. The Government will also give Hastings another $35 million to spend as it pleases under the “no worse off” funding.

Under the entity model, the cost of no reform to Hawke’s Bay would be an average of $2,870 compared to the collective Entity C, which is projected to be $1,260. Now, that shows how much this is about keeping the lid on rates. Only this week, the Central Hawke’s Bay District Council announced a 20 percent increase ahead of them on rates.

It is appropriate for me to again acknowledge the work and experience of what has been learnt through the Havelock North water crisis. Hastings has also led the councils working together to put forward a regional solution, and I do want to say publicly that I commend Hawke’s Bay for doing so, but as the local MP who also went out and heard submissions, other councils couldn’t agree on what was the right number, how many entities. We just couldn’t get the response from them. It showed there was such a mixed reaction to what councils wanted across the country. But one thing was for sure: reform was necessary, and we cannot wait. We cannot wait a day longer to get this work under way. Yes, Hawke’s Bay is regionally parochial, but I also know that as a region we look outward and have significant leadership to contribute to how the entities move forward.

I think it’s important to make really clear today that this is about the entities being doers, doing the work. This is about delivering for provincial and rural areas. And, again, this is where a region like mine can show and bring their experience forward like no other place in the country can. Water entities are plan takers; they are not plan makers. What we will see happen across this country is regional water operations employing staff to deliver the work to get the pipes in the ground, to get the water infrastructure delivered that we need, because I don’t want to see another region, another community, have to go through ever again what Havelock North went through. We cannot afford to stop doing what needs to be done.

I don’t believe at all that the National Government would have any intention on repealing three waters. They have only been making it about politics. They have no local in them. They have never focused on regional New Zealand—$100,000 is all they gave Havelock North. This Government has committed millions to Hastings to fix up the water—millions of dollars to invest.

I want to say again: we cannot have anyone go through what that young boy in Camberley did. We need to have assurances that when people turn their tap on, the drinking water is safe to drink. We need to know when people shower that they will not have their skin being burnt with chlorine simply because the councils ignored investment in infrastructure despite warnings. Despite the warnings that were given to councils, they did not invest, because there has been so much focus on not investing. We have to invest, we have to get on with this, we need to make sure that the drinking water in this country is safe. We should be able to swim in the waterways and be safe for ever.

I know beyond doubt that this bill is the start, and I want to see us get on with the business of delivering the water infrastructure across this country. It will grow jobs, it will see investment, there’ll be work on the ground, it will keep us moving forward, knowing that every time we turn on that tap, the water will be safe to drink. I commend it, very proudly, with the work that everybody has done on this bill, and I acknowledge the incredible work of the Minister Nanaia Mahuta. She has done us proud, and I am so proud to be able to stand here with the fellow colleagues of mine and actually say we’re getting on, we’re going to do it—let’s get it done. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you, Mr Speaker. When we come into this Chamber and when we pick up glasses like this, we take it for granted that the water in it is pure, it is healthy, and it doesn’t make us sick, and I thank the previous speaker, Anna Lorck, for outlining, in Havelock North, where the Water Services Entities Bill all started, with that inquiry into the contamination and with the fact that 5,000 people got sick. That inquiry happened under the National Government. The Green Party did a submission. We had an expert give evidence in submission that people got sick party because of the land use around that bore, and the failure to cap the bore properly so that you got animal effluent getting into it.

People take it for granted that human waste is flushed away to this magic place called away when they go to the toilet. People take it for granted, and yet if you’ve been through the Canterbury earthquake series, where people had long drops in their gardens, or if you’ve been on a marae that councils have neglected for too long, you don’t take clean drinking water for granted, nor do you take it for granted in Canterbury, where we’ve had huge agricultural intensification and contamination of drinking-water sources in areas like South Canterbury.

We all need to care more for our water because it is essential for life, and we need to look after it when it is delivered to us. People who use wet wipes should put them in the bin and not flush them down the toilet. They can save their community and they can save councils thousands of dollars each year by doing the right thing.

This bill is all about improving three-waters infrastructure: stormwater, waste water, and drinking water. But there seems to be a view that if you separate out balance sheets and that if you establish the entities, rates won’t rise and there’ll be an ability for the entities to borrow more and meet that huge infrastructure deficit of over $100 million.

But I think care is needed here. We have seen small councils refuse to invest. We’ve seen a lot of deferred investment. We’ve seen rates money going into civic buildings instead of into pipes under the ground. We’ve seen councils like Kaipara get itself into financial strife because it has relied on expert consultants and they haven’t provided affordable solutions.

These bigger entities will certainly have the technical capacity to manage water services, but there’s no magic money tree to provide for that infrastructure deficit. The credit rating agencies will be looking very carefully at how much the Government will impliedly support the entities when they go out to borrow, and we’ve seen overseas big private equity firms investing in companies in the UK which have been privatised creating debt mountains because of the large degree of profit that goes back to their shareholders.

There are protections in the bill against the entities privatising themselves—and I’ll come to that later—but the Green Party won’t be voting for this bill, because it doesn’t contain the protections for ongoing public ownership and operation of the water services entities. It doesn’t contain those protections because the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 285 that we put forward was removed from the bill.

Because we know that the current Government is committed to public ownership of three-waters entities, there are protections in the bill to prevent the water entities themselves divesting infrastructure assets without a very robust process and the support of territorial authorities—75 percent support on the regional representative group—but we don’t trust further Governments. We think there can quite easily be a law change, because National is saying that it will repeal this bill. We think it would be quite easy for a future National-ACT Government not to repeal the bill but to simply change the law, potentially, to get rid of regional representative groups or to get rid of the protections in Schedule 4 which require that poll of electors and which require the 75 percent support on the regional representative group.

We know that National wants long-term contracts. We know that members of the National Party like the Papakura situation, where Veolia has got a long-term contract to provide water services in Papakura. So it would be quite easy for a future National-ACT Government, because they’ve made absolutely no commitment to retain water services entities in public ownership, to simply tweak this bill to keep with the corporate water services entities model and remove any of those protections that the water services entities currently have.

So that is the major difference between the Green Party and the other parties in this House. We strongly believe in public ownership and operation of three waters assets because they are critical to the health of our communities, they’re critical to human wellbeing, and they’re critical to environmental outcomes. What National has done has spread misinformation about co-governance, misinformation about—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! You can’t accuse another party of that. You need to withdraw and apologise.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: I withdraw, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: And apologise.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: —and apologise.

What National has done has highlighted that co-governance and has not properly characterised that. What co-governance will do is it will ensure that iwi and hapū have a seat at the table and are contributing to decisions. What Te Mana o te Wai means is much more integrated water management. Those are aspects of the bill that we support, but it is our fear that a future Government, having had the entities established and with them having no protection in the legislation for ongoing public ownership and operation of these assets against a future Government changing the law—that is the reason that the Green Party will be voting against the bill. But there are many elements where we recognise the major work that Minister Mahuta has done, such as her courage in tackling this issue and not just having an inquiry at Havelock North but actually seeking a solution.

We don’t see anything that the National Party has proposed as being part of the answer. It has been critique, critique, critique, criticise, criticise, criticise, attack, attack, attack, but there is no real plan. Instead, they have wound up concern around the country, and that is where we think that the Department of Internal Affairs has got quite a lot of work to do in developing much more participatory arrangements around how people can get involved in water services.

We’ve had the author John Alexander suggesting that we have got quite significant polarisation on water issues, with that being a symptom of a deeper democracy and legitimacy problem, and suggesting much greater use of systems like Watercare is using in Auckland, where you pick people at random in a type of citizens’ assembly and have them debate these challenges, because this infrastructure deficit isn’t going to be met from a magical money tree. It needs communities to engage in how we ensure that everyone has clean drinking water and how we ensure that we’re not discharging sewage of a poor standard into our rivers, estuaries, and oceans.

People all need to participate in finding the solution to this. Simply attacking the current entity issue is not the answer. We’ve all got a responsibility because we all drink water and we all produce waste. It’s the entities themselves that need to invest, and communities need to be engaged in determining how the funding will be spread over generations without burdening the entities with unbearable debt.

We want good services. The Green Party believes that public ownership and operation of three waters is absolutely critical, and that is why, without the protection that our SOP would have provided, we cannot support the bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The ACT Party will not be supporting the Water Services Entities Bill. In fact, should ACT form part of a future Government, then we will work to repeal the bill and replace it with ACT’s water infrastructure plan. That’s a plan that I consulted on with 67 councils, before developing the plan, and drew on the knowledge and experience of organisations who deliver water services, who build water infrastructure, and who manage the environmental impacts of discharges to water.

Now, it turns out that it’s a very, very simple fix to fix the three waters problems, which are drinking water not fit for human consumption in some places, at some times, around New Zealand, particularly in smaller communities where their water supplies are vulnerable to flooding and vulnerable to damage; and waste-water treatment plants unable to keep up with the growth that New Zealand’s experienced while our population’s grown from 3 million or so since 1990 to over 5 million now. If you look at projections from Canterbury, from Auckland, and from the Wellington region, we’re heading for a population of 6 to 7 million people by 2050, and that’s one of the reasons why we need to build the infrastructure and upgrade the waste-water treatment plants to deal with that growth, as well as all the issues with the assets that haven’t been adequately maintained in the past.

But it is a simple fix, and I’ll outline it for you. Firstly, you let these organisations that own the assets, which are local government democratically elected councils, continue to own the assets. But what you do is you provide a regulator over them that says, “How will you actually perform your obligations” to deliver safe drinking water and to make sure that you’re not discharging waste water and sewage into your local rivers and streams, to meet your environmental commitments—that’s called Taumata Arowai, the regulator that the Water Services Act set up, and it was created last year in 2021.

Now, I spoke to the Taumata Arowai staff at Fieldays. They say they’re on track to meet their commitments. They’ll be checking up on all the local councils and their drinking-water supplies, and then they’re going to move on to checking up on all councils’ commitments around discharges of waste water and stormwater to the receiving environment. There—tick, job done, regulator in place.

Now, we need to think about how we actually get the investment in the networks, for maintenance and renewal of existing assets and for growth. What ACT would say is that there are billions of dollars in private and institutional capital looking for a home right now. It’s not just this Government, which blew up the Reserve Bank and started printing money and handing it out hand over fist, there is so much private institutional capital—in KiwiSaver funds, ACC, and superannuation funds—floating around the world, right now, that is looking for a place to invest. It turns out that infrastructure, which includes big subdivision developments, waste water and stormwater networks, and drinking-water treatment plants, is the perfect place for long-term institutional investors to invest. They know that if they got a billion dollars and they put it into a waste-water treatment plant, then the city that operates that plant will be able to pay it back over 30 or 40 years. That means that the city, instead of having to come up with a billion dollars’ worth of ratepayer funds to pay the contractor on the day that the waste-water treatment plant is opened, can pay it off over 25, 35, or 40 years. That’s what they do in other countries I’ve recently visited, like the United States and Canada, but it appears in New Zealand, this Government thinks that only ratepayers and taxpayers can pay for stuff. Well, that’s what the Minister of Local Government said.

Look, the ACT Party thinks that there is a problem with three waters infrastructure. It can be solved with the water regulator which already exists—that’s Taumata Arowai—and if we get the funding and financing model right and let local councils retain ownership but make sure they’re subject to the kind of regulation that will force them to meet their environmental and human health obligations around drinking-water quality, then job done, three waters reform not needed.

Then I want to come to the problems with this bill and why it is not needed. Well, this bill appears to be an improvised Treaty settlement dressed up as an infrastructure reform. And I want to bring the attention of the House and of New Zealanders watching this at home and listening on 882 AM, that wonderful frequency that broadcasts Parliament out over the airwaves, to the reasons why the ACT Party believes this is an improvised Treaty settlement dressed up as an infrastructure reform.

I asked Minister Mahuta in a written question, “Minister, what justification is there, or what special interest, what special right, do iwi and hapū have in three waters assets built after 1840?” And the Minister replied directly: “None above that of normal ratepayers.” And yet this bill contains a number of provisions that allocate iwi and hapū, those organisations, special rights, special privileges. Firstly, co-governance of the regional representation groups—50 percent of the seats on the regional representation groups which will direct the strategy for the four water services entities. And I asked the Minister, “Why is this necessary?” Well, apparently these iwi and hapū have special rights and interests because of the Treaty of Waitangi, and that, in order to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi, they must be given these seats.

Well, while the Waitangi Tribunal might say that, that’s not necessarily the case. Parliament makes laws—Parliament makes laws—and Parliament can acknowledge decisions by courts, but it makes laws that actually treat New Zealanders fairly and give them equal rights.

Then I want to come to Te Mana o Te Wai. Te Mana o Te Wai means, I understand, “The strength of the water.” It’s a concept rooted in what I understand to be the spiritual connection that many people of Māori descent feel between water and themselves. That’s a wonderful concept. In New Zealand, we’re free to practice our religious and spiritual beliefs in any way that we want. That’s one of the wonderful things about living in a liberal democracy. And yet when we consider what Te Mana o Te Wai statements in the Water Services Entities Bill require, it gives iwi and hapū in a region the exclusive right to submit a statement directing these new water corporations, set up at the direction of Minister Nanaia Mahuta. It gives these iwi and hapū the exclusive right to say how the water will be allocated, who will get it, and what should happen to the water. That also now includes geothermal water resources, geothermal energy resources—which power electricity power stations, for example—and coastal waters. And yet no other group is afforded these rights in the community.

The ACT Party says, “Look, there is a problem with the delivery and the operation of three waters infrastructure” in terms of providing for growth and allowing for renewal and maintenance costs, but, actually, this bizarre attempt to improvise a Treaty settlement, dressed up as an infrastructure reform, is a completely flawed way to do it.

What we saw a couple of weeks ago in the House with the addition of an entrenchment clause in the bill—which would apparently protect the assets in the water services corporations, these new entities the Minister wants to establish, from ever being privatised. And that was introduced to the House by a Green Party member, supported by Minister Nanaia Mahuta, who claims it was a mistake and then also claims, at the same time, she actually did mean to support it. That was apparently intended to protect the assets from privatisation. But what we know is that taking assets off democratically elected councils, billions and billions of dollars’ worth—nearly $11 billion worth in the case of Auckland’s water care—and putting them in a corporation and then telling New Zealanders that future Governments won’t be allowed to return those assets to democratic control isn’t an attempt to stop privatisation. It’s just an attempt to stop future Governments, democratically elected Governments, actually putting into place their own policies and agendas.

That’s why the entrenchment provision was repealed, and, again, that’s why the three waters reform proposed by this Government and Minister Mahuta will fail—because nobody wants it; nobody voted for it. The ACT Party will repeal it and replace it with a better policy.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ko wai ko au; ko au ko wai. I am water; water is me. Now, water is both life giving, but it can also be life destroying. And we’ve heard examples of that already this morning in this debate. In fact, right through the process of this legislation going through the House, we have heard many stories of the challenges that we have faced, not only for our people but also for our environment. Today, the purity of our water sources is becoming more and more threatened. There are the challenges of our infrastructure, but there are also the challenges of climate change, of sea-level rises. And these threats impact on us in a range of ways. This is both for us locally but it’s also on a global scale. Water has become economically, environmentally, ecologically, culturally, spiritually, and politically one of the most significant issues of our time.

Now, “clean green”, that we love to talk about here in Aotearoa, has been something that we have been challenged by in recent years—in making sure that the label that’s on the box is what’s inside and making sure that we are those people. Now, this bill is simple. This bill is about clean and affordable water for all New Zealanders.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: No, it’s not.

GLEN BENNETT: Clean and affordable water for all New Zealanders. Now, which part of that don’t you like? Is it the clean bit, or is it the affordable bit? Make up your mind.

Now, in 2020, I was privileged to be part of the New Zealand Leadership programme, which had people from all sectors—[Interruption]—yes, my colleague was on it as well—from business to the community, from sports to the arts, and everything in between. Now, I remember, throughout that year in 2010, a key message came out for me as many of the international and local speakers shared their stories in their life of leadership, and this was that the wars of our future are going to be different to the wars from the past. Our wars of the future will be fought over energy, over food, and over water. So it shows the importance of us protecting this taonga—this thing that is life, that is us.

I want to thank the Hon Nanaia Mahuta for her courage, for her tenacity, for her resolute passion to ensure that our three waters here in New Zealand are fit for purpose, not only for this generation but the next generation and the generations to come. To the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, I want to thank you for putting yourself out there and for taking many of those jabs and attacks that have been on you for doing what is right for the future of our nation, which is about protecting our people and about protecting our environment.

Now, as she spoke just earlier in the House, there was a number that really stuck out to me, and that was 107 million cubic metres of water are lost each year through leakage throughout our nation—107 million cubic metres. Now, this is a lot of water, and this shows that there are many challenges facing our councils and many challenges facing our infrastructure. And I want to say there have been a few things thrown around the House this morning. Someone from the other side of the House called out, “Stop insulting councils.” For me, it’s not about insulting councils or telling them they’re bad or they’re wrong; it’s around how do we actually enable our future, because reforms occur throughout history and throughout time, and they’re hard; they’re not easy. Reform isn’t easy, because often it feels like we might be losing something or it might be that it’s something I’ve always known and I have to change. But this isn’t about telling councils they’re bad or they’re terrible; this is actually about how do we actually get it right for all New Zealanders. When the public wake up the next day once this bill becomes law, we will still be able to turn our taps on, and water will flow. When we wake up once this legislation is passed, we’ll still be able to flush our toilets and trust where they go. When we wake up the day after this bill becomes legislation, our stormwater systems will still be operating. They will not be stolen or removed or taken away. These are the assets of our people and of our citizens. What I want to say is, when we wake up, the future is brighter because we can trust and work hard to know that when you turn on the tap, that water is safe to drink, and that you can trust where the toilet flush goes and where the stormwater flows and that it isn’t ending up in our streams or our rivers or our ocean.

In New Plymouth and in Taranaki, we’ve had many challenges with our water systems. An example of that was Port Taranaki recently. Because of high levels of E. Coli and bacteria, we were unable to have our secondary schools triathlon—because it was just too high in Ngāmotu Beach.

It’s about the people. It’s around ensuring there are good assets to ensure that our people are cared for. Now, the other thing I just want to push back on this morning is the notion of co-governance and how that seems to trigger a lot of response and how co-governance seems to trigger a lot of push-back. I’m not sure what you’re afraid of. I’m not sure what you’re concerned of when it comes to that. And it does grieve me when I hear the word “confiscation” used in this House when we talk about our water services. I come from Taranaki, and I can tell you about confiscation. My colleague across the floor there, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, can tell you about what confiscation really is. Confiscation is not about being able to turn the tap on the next morning and knowing the pipes are still there and you still have 100 percent access to those pipes. In our region in Taranaki, we had thousands and thousands and thousands of hectares confiscated. Our iwi and our hapū were landless. They became landless in their own land because of confiscation, so please don’t throw “confiscation” around in this House when we’re talking about pipes and when we’re talking about infrastructure that will remain for the future and for the good of our generations.

In closing, I again want to thank the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and I want to thank the officials, who have worked hard, who have been challenged, and who were able to work to get this to a place where I can confidently support this bill to the House this morning.

But I want to finish as I began, and that’s a quote from Jacques Cousteau, and he said, “We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.”

Simon Watts: You’re adrift.

GLEN BENNETT: Please listen up: “We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” We need to protect our water. We need to protect our future. We need to protect our planet. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to oppose this bill today. I also rise on behalf of the people of Waimakariri, who I serve: the 95 percent of Waimakariri residents who chose to opt out of this bill. That was at the time that the Government promised them that they could opt out. Yet what we found with the release of ministerial documents, that decision to legislate all in had already been made when the Waimakariri District Council was consulting their residents.

They believe that this bill comes into the House today in good faith; it comes in in bad blood. This Government has misled New Zealanders; it has no mandate. That’s why when we are in Government in 12 months’ time, we will repeal and replace this bill.

When you listen to the Labour speakers this morning, the absolute arrogance. We’ve heard comments, “If the public just bothered to read the bill”—well they have read the bill. That’s why they oppose this bill that you have rammed through under urgency and extended sitting before Christmas.

The public will not forget what you have done to them. They will remember that you do not have a mandate. My observation of the firestorm with the entrenchment Supplementary Order Paper is that, maybe in the first term, at the height of “Jacindamania”, the media and the public would have not delved into that issue that they have in the last week. Maybe under the guise of COVID, the public and the media would have not had the time. It is interesting now, though, that the voracity that the media and the public took to the arrogance of entrenchment says a lot.

In my view, it said the public have lost confidence in this Government. They have lost trust in this Government. This Government has no credibility. Look at the talking points that they’re using today. Look at that last speaker—“this bill is about clean water.” No, it’s not. This bill is about the establishment of four mega-entities that will take control of ratepayer-owned assets. This is State theft-by-stealth. Ratepayers will not have control of their water assets.

They know, when they first pitched this idea—remember the ads—it was about green sludge coming out of pipes. They don’t mention that any more because they know it was misleading—like everything they’ve said over the last 18 months—misinformation. That’s what this Government is now known as: the Government of spin, the Government of misinformation. And because the polls are now tanking and they’ve finally owned up to the cost of living crisis, now they’re like, “Oh, this is a cost of living crisis solution.” Could you believe it? What a backflip that is.

It’s no surprise that I’m the first Canterbury MP to get up today, because you won’t hear a Labour Canterbury MP get up and speak on this bill. They have been silent in Canterbury the whole year. Cantabrians do not want this bill. It’s gone down like a cup of cold sick. They know they will be judged in 12 months’ time on this bill.

I must say, a picture paints a thousand words, and to watch the Labour Government backbenchers pile in this morning, it was clear they had been whipped to sit in this House for the first reading by the Minister. To look at them and the look on their face as they swallowed that dead rat—they did not want to be here. Not only were they swallowing on that dead rat but they were choking on that dead rat as they were whipped into being in here. Welcome to being a backbencher in an unpopular Government, where those Government backbenchers are marching to defeat in 12 months’ time, for ever known as the Government of three waters.

Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak on the third reading of the Water Services Entities Bill. Te Paati Māori will not be supporting this bill at third reading. We are opposing this legislation because despite claims from both sides of the House, it does not implement co-governance, it doesn’t implement self-governance, and our belief is our tino rangatiratanga as tangata whenua is being ignored.

I guess the debate in this place, for us, has missed the central point entirely. Public water infrastructure absolutely should not be sold off, but it also doesn’t need to be entrenched. It needs to be returned to its rightful kaitiaki—its owners; tangata whenua—who, as many hapū and iwi remind today, would have ensured that we could still drink, collect kai, and swim in the wai. What’s missing in successive Governments is the leadership and the will to implement the inherent customary, proprietary, and decision-making rights of tangata whenua over fresh water—the customary kaitiaki who, today, are protesting to protect and are standing by their lakes and their rivers to clean up their wai, awa, lakes, and moana.

The conservative race-baiting campaign run by right-wing extremists and misinformation has been successful so far in whipping up opposition to any increase of Māori decision-making on water rights, and people don’t even understand what these reforms are proposing. They do not even guarantee Māori representation, let alone iwi representation, on the actual governance entities. While iwi and councils will both appoint a body that then appoints the entities, these degrees of separation are designed to limit Māori power through not creating precedents or co-governance.

So there is no doubt, I will say, that there will be improvements to the ability of mana whenua, particularly larger iwi, but our concerns are that this will have a cost, particularly for those smaller iwi and hapū. There is the reality that until the Crown implements our customary and decision-making rights on fresh water, reform of this scale is dangerous. The ongoing Crown position that everyone owns the water or no one owns the water—which is it? We can’t keep up—is, effectively, designed to do what we saw happen in 1983, which is extinguish the rights of tangata whenua, as they did with our rights to foreshore and seabed.

So three waters is one thing, and there are elements of this bill that we can support, but what actually needs to happen is to go the full scale, not half-pie, ka pai, and that is to bring about protection and restoration of our water through the absolute recognition and legal implementation of Māori ownership rights. Te Paati Māori would overturn the Crown’s position that everyone owns water and, instead, adopt a position that acknowledges Māori rights to fresh water and kaitiakitanga. We acknowledge the intrinsic w’akapapa of fresh water and support hapū and iwi to negotiate for those w’akapapa rights to be acknowledged in law, as Te Tiriti proposed. The w’akapapa connection between tangata whenua and wai māori is intrinsic, and I guess what we have seen is 150-plus years of Government—local government, regional government—and they’ve all failed in Te Mana o Te Wai.

So we want to see negotiations between Government and hapū and iwi which need to be re-established to develop a policy framework on how Māori rights and interests are implemented in freshwater management and allocation. The Waitangi Tribunal said that the Crown should be doing this and it should be working directly with hapū and iwi to create a standard process for addressing these rights and interests. Instead, we have the Crown currently deciding to stop negotiation with iwi leaders and shamefully, instead, has established its own Māori advisory group, te Kāhui Wai Māori.

And close to our hearts in Te Tai Hauāuru right now, within W’anganui, we need to put a moratorium on new consents for water bottling plants. We see the same in Lake Horowhenua. Until we can guarantee the safety of our aquifers and the life-sustaining mauri of our wai māori, not one more drop. I guess we are concerned that the Crown has been in charge of our wai, environmentally, socially, politically, and has continued to fail future generations. We will prioritise these protections.

What we see now is reform that is weak. Our wai is in crisis, and we need transformation, not tinkering. We will accept nothing less than our rights, our interests being honoured and implemented. Ko te mana o te moana, ko te mana o te wai i ahu mai i te mana o Papatūānuku, nō reira tēnā koutou katoa.

[The spiritual state of the sea and of water stems from the spiritual state of the Earth Mother and so, greetings to you all.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to talk about stormwater, waste water, and drinking water. Those are the three waters. We’re not talking about coastal water or thermal water—different types: fresh vs coastal. We’re not talking about different states of water. We’re not talking about water ownership. What this bill is is all the water in pipes and treatment stations, and what happens to that water once we’ve used it.

Those pipes and those treatment stations are owned and operated and organised by 67 different territorial councils around the country. We’ve heard from around the House today that there is a problem with the lack of investment in that infrastructure. When you do not invest in infrastructure that deals with waste water, we have problems. We had some vivid images of it in the first reading, and I won’t go into them, but we have problems. How do councils fund that infrastructure? Most of it is through rates. It turns out that most ratepayers don’t find that voting for an increase in rates, on that infrastructure—those pipes; those treatment stations—is something that they’re particularly interested in doing. And, of course, there are 67 of those councils—so, many of those councils are small entities. Obviously, Auckland Council is a giant one, but there are little places, little places like Waimate, that are not well resourced to make big infrastructure investments. So that is one of the reasons why we have this bill and a suite of bills. It is because Minister Nanaia Mahuta, in the Helen Clark Government, realised, as a Minister, that we have a problem in New Zealand with that investment in those very boring pipes and treatment stations.

We also have a secondary problem that the ACT member spoke about, and that is the regulation of that water. Nanaia Mahuta, as a Minister, in this Jacinda Ardern - led Government, has already put through the legislation establishing that water regulator so that councils—and it will be entities—are checked. Is this water safe; is it not? That regulation was largely missing in the past, so we’ve fixed it.

What this bill does—and it’s important to note, here, as well, that this is part of a package, so that there are other bills coming—is it establishes these four entities that we’ve heard about. What it doesn’t do is change the Resource Management Act. Water allocation is an issue under the Resource Management Act. It’s interesting, at the moment, submissions are open on the Natural and Built Environment Bill, which does deal with water allocation and, you know, water generally, because when you need to take water or to discharge something to water, you need a resource management consent. That’s not what this bill is about; this bill is about when you’ve got the water or when you’re discharging your waste water or stormwater.

However, we do know that, of course, there is a relationship between the decision makers who are deciding what sort of treatment station they want with that Resource Management Act function of the safety of our environment. So that is why there’s this concept of Te Mana o te Wai in this Water Services Entities Bill, because there is a relationship there, and it may be that a Te Mana o te Wai statement will say something like: “We, mana whenua, have a preference for waste water being discharged to land; we don’t want it to go to the ocean.” That is the sort of thing that is relevant, then, for the owners, for the entity, to decide, “Well, how do we invest in our waste-water treatment? What are our decisions going to be?” That is how they interlink, and it’s really important that we think about that.

What else the bill does, of course, is we know that it sets up the regional representative groups, and that is where the mana whenua representation is at. It’s equal with the territorial authorities. That’s at clause 27(3) of the bill. That body, that regional representative group, appoints the board. The “Membership of the board” is at clause 57. The Finance and Expenditure Committee thought really carefully about the skill set that that board needs to have. There’s a lot of things listed in clause 57. The board has a constitution. At clause 91, you can look at what that constitution needs to contain. Then, the board, at clause 141, responds to the Te Mana o te Wai statement, or statements, that have come from the mana whenua in the entity’s rohe.

What I want to say is that I’m proud to be part of a Government that is clear and tackling difficult, complicated problems that are not a quick fix; that are going: “Well, how do we invest sensibly into the future of this country? How do we do it in a way that we don’t just privatise all of the assets?” We just heard from the member Simon Court about exactly what ACT would do in that role, and that’s not something that I want to be part of.

So I want to say thank you to our brave and courageous Minister Nanaia Mahuta. I want to say thank you to all of the local government representatives who were on the various working groups as this legislation has progressed, as the policy has progressed, and as the policy and the legislation progresses on the bills that are to come. I want to thank the Attorney-General—not the Attorney-General, the Auditor-General; wrong AG!—for considering the changes that the select committee made to really amplify the accountability mechanisms. I want to thank the submitters around the country, especially those councils that came and gave their submissions and spoke about their important relationships—highly valued relationships—with mana whenua. Lastly, I want to thank the Standing Orders Committee, which has now opened submissions for the process of entrenchment. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Well, well, well, we now know the parties of the left have abandoned the ship of State and, at the 11th hour on the Water Services Entities Bill, not a single party other than Labour is going to be supporting this: not National; not ACT—we knew that; not the Māori Party, after the second reading; and now not the Greens. The only party that thinks this is a good idea, in this House, is Labour. But don’t they look glum about it? I know those backbenchers don’t think this is a good idea, because they’re having a look at the polls and thinking, “This is going to be curtains for me.”

Let’s talk about one of them for whom it may be curtains. Anna Lorck said, in her contribution, that Havelock North is the reason for this bill. Well, I don’t agree. Let me tell you what the reason for this bill is: blind political ideology—no more, no less. The reason for Te Mana o Te Wai was Havelock—that’s true—and nobody wants to see a repeat of that, but this Government has spent two years catastrophising the situation with our water, demonising councils, and candy-coating the benefits of the water services entities. But I said it at the start of this process, and I’ll continue to say it: this is nothing more than State-sponsored theft of community assets. And I found Glen Bennett’s contribution quite ironic—that he was talking about theft, and iwi knowing about that. Well, this is the water equivalent of a really bad Treaty settlement: taking hundreds of billions of dollars of assets away from councils and throwing crumbs at them—you know, a little bit of compensation here, a bit of debt forgiveness there.

Glen Bennett: It’s still there to be used.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Sorry?

Glen Bennett: It’s still there, and it’ll still be used.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh, it’s still there! So was the land that was confiscated from iwi. It’s a very good analogy, and it’s fundamentally wrong. The member knows it’s wrong and he’s trying to put a polish on it. Well, he can’t.

The catastrophising of the situation has been, I think, underpinning every single speech from a Labour member since this started. The Minister continued it, Anna Lorck continued it, all members have continued it, and nobody’s arguing that—we need to have clean water. We need to have good foul water and stormwater management, but Barbara Edmonds, talking about Auckland, fails to recognise that the problem is already being fixed with the central interceptor that’s being run by Watercare. Anna Lorck did admit that Havelock North have just spent millions of dollars fixing their water. They didn’t need the Government to come along and tell them what to do. They knew what the problem was, they knew what the solution was, and this is State-sponsored theft—nothing less.

Now, I want to go into the issue of co-governance. I think it’s really important. In my city of Dunedin, we will be part of Entity D. There are 1.1 million people who live in the South Island and most of them—but not all of them—are going to be in Entity D. If they came along and said, “Well, OK, we’re going to have this board of representatives for the territorial authorities”, Invercargill is going to have six members on that board and the rest of the South Island is going to have six. Those other 23 territorial authorities would be up in arms. Now, one thing that Entity D does have is one really good iwi, not several iwi. Ngāi Tahu, with the same population as Invercargill, is going to have six members on the board, and the rest of the 24 territorial authorities are going to have another six. How is that representation for the 1.1 million people, nearly, that will be part of Entity D?

Stuart Smith: It’s not.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It isn’t—that’s right, Mr Smith. And not only that, but those representatives—it would be great if they had consensus—need a 75 percent majority in order to get anything done. Where have we heard about 75 percent? Sounds a lot like entrenchment, doesn’t it? Well, it’s going to be there in another way, and so we haven’t heard the last of questions about entrenchment.

Now I want to go to the financial case for change. Simon Watts is a very good chartered accountant, as is my humble self. What we know is that when financial forecasts are done 30 years out, they’re not worth the paper they’re written on. The benefits-realisation estimates that actually came out of Scotland—a flawed methodology in my view, because, while Scotland has 5 million people, half of them live along the Forth and Clyde rivers, in a very concentrated situation. They are not distributed across—and Scotland itself is no bigger than Otago and Southland. We have five million people distributed right across the length and breadth of a long, skinny country, and the synergies that Scotland was able to achieve simply can’t be done here. Pipes are pipes. A pipe in Westport is going to be needed just as much as a pipe in Balclutha, and the idea that, according to the modelling, there would be capital reductions of 50 percent in cost is just pie in the sky. The operational reductions of 65 percent—

Joseph Mooney: Impossible.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: You’re quite right, Joseph Mooney. Absolutely impossible—particularly when there is going to be no reduction in headcount, apparently. And, of course, staffing is a very big part of managing water, and certainly engineers.

I think back to the Auckland super-city. Now, that was my Government that did that, but the benefits realisation for the taxpayer was going to be significant by merging the seven councils up there—or six councils; whatever it was. I wonder whether the Auckland ratepayer, 10 years later, thinks, since they’re listening to this debate, “Thank goodness my rates are lower because of the Auckland super-city merger.”—said no one ever. So I say that about this. I will be in my rocking chair—in fact, I’m determined to live long enough to be there in 30 years’ time and be proven right. The benefits realisation is pie in the sky, and it’s not going to happen.

I talked about co-governance and the potential for division, but that’s actually not my greatest concern. My greatest concern is the division that will occur between our communities. I think about Entity D. Dunedin, for the first time in about 30 years, is actually growing in population, and it needs the infrastructure base to support it. It has the prerogative now, and the autonomy, to go and rate the community and consult on its long-term plan and build the water services infrastructure it needs, as they’ve done for the last 20 years, in upgrading it, and a pretty good job it’s done so far. Now they’re going to have to go to Christchurch, or wherever the head office of Entity D is going to be, and say, “We need infrastructure.” Christchurch could easily turn around and say, “Oh I don’t know about that. Selwyn is growing a bit faster than you. And Invercargill’s pipes are a bit rustier than yours. So you’re going to have to wait.” All of that autonomy has gone. And I’m sorry, six members of a representative board fighting for 24 territorial authorities is not going to give the representation and the lobbying that cities like Dunedin and towns like Balclutha will need in order to get what they have done. So it’s going to pit communities against each other. I absolutely believe that. That is wrong.

Of course, we’ve already talked about the taxation without representation. There is more legislation to come to work out how on earth the revenue is going to be collected from the water services users. So that will be the first litmus test. I go back to the question of the financial modelling. I think it’s ironic that Grant Robertson can’t even stick to a Budget Policy Statement four months before he issues the Budget. How on earth are we going to have confidence in financial modelling that goes out 30 years? I think it’s going to be completely, completely undermined.

I want to finish with the biggest false flag of this week: that is the question of privatisation. It’s a false flag, because it’s been raised as a risk that National would privatise, and there were attempts—

Rachel Brooking: Did you listen to ACT’s speech?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Listen up. It’s a false flag, because National wouldn’t have stolen the assets in the first place. The biggest thing that the ratepayer and the taxpayer have to fear is this Government’s theft of these assets. There will never be the privatisation by a central government under a National-led Government, because the assets wouldn’t be in central government control. They are going back to the local authorities from whence they were stolen, so that there is taxation and representation aligned, and they can manage their own needs, the way they have for 150 years. One thing a National Government will not do is catastrophise the situation, the way those ads and every single speech from Labour Party members have done. I did refer to taxation without representation—that is, if they don’t like the quality of their local assets, they can vote out the council. Well, they won’t be able to do that when this bill is passed, but they do have another vote. They can vote against the people who stole these assets and centralised in a Wellington-knows-best way, and I think that vote is less than a year away. No wonder Labour are worried.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This country faces a $180 billion problem. That is how much this country needs to find over the next 30 years to fund water infrastructure in this country. If it doesn’t, then people will get sick. If it doesn’t, then development will not happen. We heard numerous times that the National Party MPs dispute that figure but provide nothing to the counter. They can point to their own individual qualifications, as Michael Woodhouse just did—but he didn’t provide any counter argument other than he disagrees with the figures that have been provided by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland and peer-reviewed by Beca, and peer-reviewed by Farrierswier. But doesn’t that sum up the National Party’s position on this very issue? They have walked a very interesting line throughout this debate, and I’m very interested indeed to see that yet again the National Party have changed their position on the issue of water services reform.

It seems now, today, that the National Party have always agreed that something needs to be done. I had a little read through the first reading speeches. Simon Watts started his speech and finished his speech with a very clear message: they will repeal three waters—full stop. There was nothing about replacing it. It was, “We will repeal.” If anybody here wants to go over to Wairarapa, as soon as they drive through Featherston they will see a massive billboard that says the National Party will repeal and reverse three waters. So that’s the second position. The second position was not just repeal; it was repeal and reverse, and now they’re trying to say they will repeal and replace what is in this bill. So there are three positions, and I think what that says to the people of New Zealand and to Parliament is that they are trying to position themselves as the ones that have the solutions, without offering anything at all.

This bill deals with a very serious problem—an issue of the tune of $180 billion that at the moment every single community in New Zealand is facing. And when every single community in New Zealand is facing that, it means ratepayers are facing that. Councils themselves say they cannot afford to do it by themselves. They either have to increase rates to an extent where the community can’t afford it or they don’t do the work they know they need to do. Councils aren’t the villains in this issue. Councillors are hard-working and dedicated elected representatives. There are people that work at the councils that have dedicated many years of hard service to their communities. Over successive generations, the councils that currently represent our communities face an issue that they have inherited. It is not their fault but they cannot fix it by themselves.

If we take the Tararua district, for example, they need to find $600 million over the next 30 years—a figure they do not dispute. They have one of the largest roading networks in the country, a huge geographical area, and a very small population that simply cannot find that type of money over the next 30 years, 50 years, or probably even over the next 100 years. They just can’t do it, and the National Party’s solution is to leave them on their own and say they’ll be all right, because National is going to repeal the legislation—or is it repeal and reverse, or is it repeal and replace?

Let’s take their point of view that was stated today—that they’re going to repeal and replace. With what? It’s a very simple question—a question that has been posed for four years. What are they going to replace it with? They have no ideas. They have no policies. That is not a debating point, Mr Speaker; that is a matter of fact. As I was going through the first reading speeches, I came up with an absolute doozy from Matt Doocey—a Doocey doozy. He promised in his first reading speech that the National Party will co-fund this required investment. He said it once and once only. He contributed to the second reading debate, he contributed to the committee of the whole House, and he contributed again today. Did he say it? Did he say it—my foot. Someone got in his ear and said that what he had just committed the National Party to was a $92.5 billion dollar bill, while, at the time, they were proposing $11 billion worth of tax cuts. Even Paul Goldsmith knows that one doesn’t add up. The fact of the matter here is that the National Party are left wanting. I’ll take the opportunity to give the ACT Party credit. I don’t agree with them ever but at least they come up with policies. At least they come to the table with an alternative.

You will note that Simon Watts has tried a real trick that he tried at the second reading as well. He says that the Government says that there are no alternatives. No, we don’t; we say that they have no alternatives. Communities 4 Local Democracy had an alternative. They presented it to the Government. The Minister Nanaia Mahuta and her officials reviewed it. They discussed it with them, and they appreciate the fact that they actually came up with an alternative, but it didn’t achieve what is needed to be achieved because it doesn’t achieve the balance sheet separation. Simon Watts will scoff, but I’ll make this very simple point. On two occasions in this House he has listed a long list of alternatives—none of them are his—and none of them has he or his party committed to. Make no mistake—the National Party have one policy on this matter and one policy alone, and that is the status quo. They want to leave communities—that can’t afford to do this work—on their own. It is the free market, user-pays mentality that is rife amongst the National Party that is going to leave ratepayers with bills that they simply cannot afford. Even now we are seeing rates rises across the country that people can’t afford, and that doesn’t even take into account the amount of work that is required, which is being outlined by councils day in and day out. And let’s not forget: while some councils agree with three waters proposals and some councils don’t agree with three waters proposals by this Government, every single one of them agrees that the status quo is unsustainable.

So when the National Party members stand up today and paint themselves as the saviour of local government, and, ironically, promote the one thing that the local government sector do not want when it comes to water services, that is called dancing on a pin. That is trying to present an argument and distract from the core issue here—that they have no solution to a problem that is facing this country and is going to cost, over 30 years, $180 billion. At least the ACT Party came up with a solution. Their solution is that they will share the GST from new developments from councils to allow them to invest in water services. Fine, good as gold—a billion a year. It’s a $180 billion problem, and a billion dollars a year is going to take a very long time to solve the issue. So it doesn’t add up, but good on them for coming up with a solution. I don’t agree with the Green Party’s position. They agree with the need for reform, but for particular issues, they’re voting against it, and so too are Te Paati Māori. But I appreciate and respect that view. At least they’ve got one.

All we’ve heard from the National Party throughout this debate is “No.” They change their position because they pick up the sentiment in the public. Once they realise that the public recognises that there needs to be reform in water services, they think that the public won’t realise when they change their billboards across the country, except for forgetting to do a few. So if you drive for two hours on State Highway 2 you’ll see a mix of billboards: “We will repeal and reverse”, “We will repeal and replace”, advertising to this country that over this whole debate they have changed their view without coming up with a policy.

For four years this issue has been debated. The Government, through the leadership of Nanaia Mahuta—and I take the opportunity to acknowledge her today. She has taken all the rubbish that the National Party has thrown at her, and all the rubbish they have stirred up in our communities, and some that has gone towards the Minister has been incredibly nasty. She has stood strong and stood proud and focused on the issues. She has focused on a solution—the one thing where the National Party refuses to front up. So by all means, run around the country with your slogans, but I implore the National Party to answer one thing when they go and talk to the communities. Justify to their faces how they are happy to leave them with unaffordable rates rises and unsustainable water services in this country when they had an opportunity to engage and had an opportunity to come up with a solution.