Taumata Arowai—the Water Services Regulator Bill

I move, That the Taumata Arowai—the Water Services Regulator Bill be now read a second time.

The bill will establish Taumata Arowai as the new water services regulator, an entity that will oversee, administer, and enforce New Zealand’s drinking-water regulatory system while also overseeing the performance of waste water and storm water networks. This is the first of a two bill legislative reform package that will comprehensively strengthen the country’s drinking-water regime. While this bill creates Taumata Arowai as a new Crown agent, a second, complementary, water services bill will be introduced to legislate a new drinking-water regulatory framework and prescribe the new regulator’s responsibilities and powers.

In the wake of the serious contamination of Havelock North’s drinking-water in 2016, this reform package demonstrates this Government’s commitment to fixing a broken regulatory system for water and ultimately ensuring New Zealanders receive water that is clean and safe to drink. We’ve had years of under-investment and challenge in the three waters infrastructure space. That’s lead to increasing fiscal pressures on renewal, maintaining, and building a resilient water network system. While we acknowledge it may be challenging for some suppliers to comply, the Government has made a commitment to partner with local government to find solutions.

So let me return to the bill. I want to thank the Health Committee for its work to consider the bill, and the organisations and members of the public who made written and oral submissions. I would also like to acknowledge the constructive collaboration of local government and the wider water sector and their contribution to this bill, as well as the work of the Havelock North drinking-water inquiry, which recommended the creation of a dedicated drinking-water regulator. In addition, I would like to thank my colleagues for their support and contributions towards the bill, in particular the Minister of Health, the Hon Dr David Clark and the Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker.

It was significant to see support from all sides of the House during the bill’s first reading and during the select committee process. When it comes to ensuring the basic right of clean, safe drinking-water for our communities we all need to come together as MPs with a greater benefit in mind. And in this instance, the desire to strengthen the regulatory environment to assure ratepayers of safe, healthy drinking-water from the source, through the pipes, out the tap, and back into the receiving environment.

The Health Committee received 70 submissions on the bill from individuals and organisations, including a number of local authorities and public health groups. The vast majority expressed support for the intent of the bill and for the establishment of Taumata Arowai to regulate drinking-water services and oversee waste and storm water performance across the country. In particular, many submitters commented on the need for and benefits of this new entity, and the important role it will have in promoting safe drinking-water and protecting the health of New Zealanders. Very few submitters disagreed with the establishment of Taumata Arowai. Feedback was generally focused on suggestions for improving clarity and consistency across particular aspects of the bill.

Based on this feedback, I’m pleased that the Health Committee has recommended a number of specific and technical amendments to the bill, which I wholly endorse. Those amendments to the bill, as introduced, include changes and additions to a number of definitions to ensure alignment with the complementary water services bill, which is in the final stages of its development. Also there are changes to improve transparency and clarity around Taumata Arowai’s Māori Advisory Group, including strengthened reporting requirements for how Taumata Arowai’s board considers and gives effect to the Māori Advisory Group’s advice, and the addition of a formal mechanism to enable time for Taumata Arowai to establish a technical advisory group, providing the regulator with a flexible process for seeking independent expert advice on technical aspects whenever needed.

The committee also recommended the inclusion of a definition of “Te Mana o te Wai” that is consistent across legislation, including with the existing National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. One of Taumata Arowai’s statutory objectives will be to give effect to Te Mana o te Wai in relation to its specific functions and duties. This definition will provide clarity and certainty for the regulator as it interprets and gives effect to Te Mana o te Wai as part of its statutory obligations. Overall, the changes recommended by the committee improve the bill. And again, I want to thank the committee for its thoughtful work.

As a dedicated, focused regulator, Taumata Arowai will provide national level oversight, leadership, and guidance for drinking-water suppliers tasked with adhering to their new regulatory requirements. It is intended to take a collaborative and supportive approach to working with local authorities in the wider water sector, including working with water suppliers to help them achieve compliance, building sector capability by promoting education and training, having regard to cultural aspects including ensuring that tikanga Māori and Te Mana o te Wai are enabled and supported. The regulator will also provide a firm but consistent approach to compliance, monitoring, and enforcement. This will ensure adherence to the regulatory regime and, ultimately, ensure that what comes out of the tap is safe to drink.

It has been and continues to be the Government’s intent to take a holistic, system-wide approach to three waters reform, from the source, through the pipes to the tap, and back out again. That’s why Taumata Arowai will also have a remit to provide much needed central oversight and guidance on the operation of wastewater treatment plants and stormwater networks, with regional councils remaining the primary regulator for waste and stormwater discharges. This allows the new regulator to contribute to improved freshwater outcomes, in addition to its primary focus on drinking-water regulation and safety.

Our new regulatory regime will address the serious and unacceptable situation identified by the Havelock North drinking-water inquiry and the Three Waters Review, where some New Zealanders don’t have access to safe and acceptable drinking-water, where too many people must boil their water to ensure it’s safe to drink, where an estimated 34,000 people get sick from their drinking-water every year, and where there is a risk of another Havelock North contamination event occurring; a tragedy that resulted in four deaths and over 5,000 serious illnesses.

COVID-19’s tragic and unprecedented impact, both here and abroad, has brought home for all of us the importance of safeguarding the long-term health and safety of our whānau, particularly our most vulnerable members of society. With this bill, the Government is making clear its continued determination to put the health and safety of New Zealanders first. We’re fixing a failed regulatory system, and this is a key pillar of our Government’s reform package. We’ve chosen a dedicated water regulator so that there will be a very clear focus on safe water, and this is what the local government sector wanted. The bill also fits with our wider plan for Māori, and that’s the participation in the overall water management network. A Māori advisory group will be established to advise the regulator on Māori interests, and the regulator will have an objective to protect and promote Te Mana o te Wai.

Before I finish, I’d like to note my intention to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper during the committee stage of the bill. This would amend the commencement provisions in the bill to provide time for Taumata Arowai’s board to be appointed before the Act comes into force. I hope members of this House will join me in continuing to support the passage of this bill, as the first step in our regulatory water reform programme. I move that the House takes note of the Health Committee’s report, and I do commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill, the Taumata Arowai—the Water Services Regulator Bill, which has now returned from select committee. I want to acknowledge the chair and other members of the Health Committee, who did a good job with this bill, and all those who submitted on it. In fact, there was such agreement with the recommendations the officials made, that the committee unanimously agreed with pretty much all of the recommendations—again, showing the collaborative nature of the select committee process.

Now, as has been mentioned, this bill falls out of a recommendation from the Havelock North inquiry, and, fundamentally, it does three things. It creates the regulatory body for drinking-water, it does provide advice on waste water and storm water—advisory only; so while this is primarily around drinking-water, there is a reflection in the bill on waste water and storm water—and it develops a Māori advisory council.

Now, there were parts of this bill that were quite complex—for example, identifying and describing a domestic self-supplier, which might seem by itself to be quite easy, but I will read you some examples as to what is a domestic self-supplier and what is not. For example, a domestic self-supplier: “A single property, with tenants on a lease, that is supplied by a rainwater tank is a domestic self-supplier. A single holiday house that is supplied by a rainwater tank and is rented to tourists on a short-term basis is a domestic self-supplier.”—that’s quite complex. It depends on what the lease or rental arrangement of the house is, and whether it’s on a water tank or not.

“A multi-dwelling building (for example, multiple separate apartments contained in a single building) that has its own bore water supply” you might intrinsically think “Oh yes, this is a domestic self-supplier.”, but it’s not, in this bill, qualified as a domestic self-supplier, even though it’s got its own bore. Instinctively, you might say, “Well, look, it would seem to be.”, but we came up with good reasoning for that, and we can understand and explain that.

“A marae wharekai … or community hall that has its own river water supply is not a domestic self-supplier.”—again, we might have thought that it might qualify. “A café building supplied by a rainwater tank is not a domestic self-supplier.”—so they are quite complex definitions here.

Are you on a rainwater tank, is it a bore or is it a river, and is the property leased, is it commercial, is it a short-term lease—all these qualifiers come into the definition of a domestic self-supplier. So we grappled with that and understood from officials how we might explain and why that suited the purposes of the bill.

Similarly, in what might seem a similar definition, a “drinking-water supplier” is also quite complex. Who is the drinking-water supplier? Well, it’s “a person who supplies drinking-water to consumers who are drinking-water supply;”, but, interestingly, it also “includes a person who ought reasonably to know they are supplying drinking-water to consumers;”. Now, that’s going to be a little bit difficult to challenge as to who “ought reasonably to know”, but that wasn’t the purpose of us at this point. We were reassured by officials that they could establish that, should it be contested, but it also shows some of the complexity around what might seem a relatively simple premise.

The Māori Advisory Group is created by this bill as well, and as my tuahine has said, Te Mana o te Wai is also incorporated in the bill. Of course, this isn’t new. This talks about the mauri, or starts to talk about the mauri, of the wai, and if we think back to Chris Finlayson and his Treaty settlement with Whanganui River, where, effectively, it was given some of the same attributes of a natural person, then this is sort of an extension of that piece of work to include it in legislation and say that we recognise the non-tangible things around the importance of water as well. Māori interests are taken into account through the creation of the advisory council, but, again, this is mainly setting up the administrative body.

I’ve mentioned how collaborative the select committee was in getting to this second reading, and I also want to acknowledge then the Hon Jacqui Dean, who brought her expertise and listened to a lot of submissions on behalf of some of us—we left that to the domain experts, and she advised this side of the House as to what our recommendation should be—and Lawrence Yule, who then also picked up some of the local government responsibilities, obviously, with intimate understanding of some of the reasons that this bill comes to the House. So I did want to acknowledge their work on this.

Look, the National Party will be supporting this bill. We’re comfortable with it being advisory. We’re comfortable with the framework that it is setting up. There are further discussions to be had on waste water and storm water, and we don’t think we’re precluding those discussions in this bill here. It does certainly talk to waste water and storm water, but just in an advisory way. We see no regulations here that we need to offer a substantive view to. That will be another discussion for another bill at another time.

So, on the basis that this is primarily talking about drinking-water and that it’s creating the administrative framework for drinking-water to press forward, we agree with the recommendations of the Havelock North inquiry, and we agree with the substance of what is in this bill. Again, our thanks go to the select committee and to officials, who helped navigate us through some of these complex issues, and we’re supporting this bill further. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I’ll, firstly, start with acknowledging my colleague Dr Reti and also Matt Doocey, who’s in the House. But can I say from the Health Committee perspective, we do take our work seriously to a point where we work together collaboratively. So I do want to highlight that this is not only a cross-Government agency bill—because, in fact, in addition to the Health officials, we had local government officials work with us and Environment officials who are also part of the context of that work—but it was also cross-Ministers; Minister Mahuta has acknowledged Minister Clark. And I want to say it’s cross-party, actually, and I do acknowledge the work and contribution of Jacqui Dean specifically, who did come in and sub for the National Party as we deliberated.

So this bill is one of two. And the context of this bill is it will provide for the broader reforms. We’ve heard about drinking-water, which comes from the Havelock inquiry. It also includes waste water and storm water. And the next bill, rua, will be about the regulation of drinking-water, source water, waste water, and storm water.

I think the governance arrangements do need to be explained. So we have Taumata Arowai and then we have a Māori advisory board that, when originally proposed, you couldn’t sit on both. I actually think, significantly, that was one of the major changes that we agreed to as a committee. So there will be shared members.

But the other aspect I want to highlight is that the Māori advisory board will have their own section in the annual report and their advice to Taumata Arowai will be transparent. Also, within that context, if Taumata Arowai doesn’t take the recommendations, the Māori advisory board will be able to highlight that. So there is full transparency and disclosure. It didn’t quite go to full co-governance, but I think it’s a step toward a model that will see iwi and Māori, who, obviously, have an interest in water, fully realising their governance responsibility. And we did respond to local government and providers and suppliers by also adding a technical advisory board, which will provide, obviously, advice to Taumata Arowai.

I am very excited about this bill being before the House today, and we’re also very excited, Minister, that your next bill will come to us as well. So I commend the bill to the House. Kia ora.

I call Matt Doocey.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the call. I thought you hadn’t seen me standing there for a moment there. Can I start by acknowledging, as well, the Health Committee, and especially the committee chair, Louisa Wall, who, I think, ably chairs the Health Committee. It was a difficult time during COVID-19 to coordinate a gaggle of MPs and a range of submissions in a number of important bills we had in front the committee at that time. I know there was some criticism as to whether we should have continued with that, but, in the end, respectfully, we’re all foot soldiers and we’re just doing what we’re told, and the process proceeded. And here we are today at the second reading of this important bill, the Taumata Arowai—the Water Services Regulator Bill, which the National Party will be supporting.

And, of course, the reason we are here today, as many submitters noted, during the inquiry into the Havelock North drinking-water issue, the inquiry highlighted systemic failures with the drinking-water regulatory systems, blurred accountabilities, ineffective enforcement, a lack of expertise and investment, and a need for a dedicated, well-resourced regulator. So that was the driver of this bill. We had 70 submissions, and it was fair to say that most submitters agreed with the direction of travel with this bill, and that’s why this bill, coming back for its second reading after being through the select committee process, has only really had minor changes and minor amendments, which we’re supporting today.

But I think what we don’t want to do is get lulled into that sense of security that we have got it right so far. And that’s what I want to talk about today in my call—the tensions within that, because, quite rightly, it was a very emotive issue at the time, but we as legislators need to make sure that we have good law. There was some concern that if we just view this bill, this stand-alone bill, on its own it doesn’t really represent the full make-up of the systems.

We’ve heard from previous speakers today about the Three Waters Review and other bills that will be introduced, because, of course, they will be supporting each other. There was a real tension around the costs, and if I can refer to the submitter, the Waimakariri District Council, who I, obviously, as the Waimakariri MP, have a lot to do with. In their points of submission when they talked about the centralised regulatory body, the bill is silent on who will fund the regulator and where the funding will come from. At present, district water advisers, the existing regulators, are funded by central government via the Ministry of Health. So you can see that real tension playing out between councils understanding what will be the end result around compliance and cost, and especially councils that might feel that they are on the back foot because they have a limited rating base. When you look at the Waimakariri, they currently provide reticulated water supplies for 80 percent of the district’s population from 14 schemes. And you’ll find that they are a range of urban schemes as well as semi-restricted supplying rural and rural/residential areas.

So you can see from that that there’s quite understandably some apprehension about what this bill will end up looking like but more as to how it translates from the intent to the implementation. In the end, this bill clearly is signalling the intent, and we heard from the 70 submitters that they support the intent. We have, what I would say, so far, is the full support of all the parties in Parliament, but the real concern is what the cost of the implementation will be. But I think what we should point out also, in contrast to that, is that the cost is a valid argument but, of course, the cost of doing nothing is more of a valid argument in my mind, because not only is it the cost of providing safe drinking-water to New Zealanders but the cost of not providing that is a real concern in terms of health and social costs, which we saw in Havelock North.

When you look at the monetised benefits of these reforms, as stated by the Department of Internal Affairs, it ranges from $13.5 million to $16.5 million. So we need to weigh that up. There will be up-front costs. There will be real pressures and tensions as each jurisdiction has a different make-up and a different profile about how they’ll be able to respond to that. And in an area like Waimakariri, the electorate that I represent—I cover parts of Christchurch City Council and Waimakariri District Council—you can already see this tension playing out as to what will be the cost of the compliance and delivery for metropolitan areas and provincial and rural areas. So that’s why we welcome this bill. But we do look forward to the introduction of the next bill, which will make up a more complete picture.

We do look forward to further regulations coming through that will help enable local councils to make informed decisions. They know that they are going to have to take a step up. There was a real concern that came out of the submissions that a lot of the capability of the professionals sits within local government at the moment, and with this new Crown entity, that might take that capability and capacity out of local government, so that would be a concern as well. I look forward to supporting this bill and debating it next in the committee of the whole House.

Debate interrupted.