Water Services Entities Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2—title and commencement.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. We’re coming to the end of what has been an interesting debate this evening in regards to the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill, in this aspect referring to the title of the bill in regards to clause 1.

There are a number of suggestions that I want to make to the Minister in regards to what we could call this bill, but I want to provide a number of pragmatic suggestions, because the reality is that this Water Services Entities Amendment Bill, as it is titled, is actually—and should be referred to as—Labour’s “Back-down Bill”. Because, in effect, what this bill is actually doing is making a number of amendments and back-downs in regards to legislation that was put in place by this Government, and amending elements of legislation put in place by this Government, only a number of months before a subsequent change of those at the helm of the Government and, subsequently, that policy bonfire process that went on and the subsequent release of a National Party policy document in regards to an alternative, Local water done well. Following that release, the Government decided to listen and reset their position and came up with the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill.

But I think this bill should be referred to as the “Back-down Bill”, because that’s what it is and that is what it should be called, because it is not reasonable to not refer to it as something that it is not. But the fact that, subsequently, the bill was only out just over a month or so for consultation also shows that it isn’t really, obviously, a full process of consultation. That feedback is in the report, which was the feedback from the select committee. I mean, it says, “Many submitters commented on the limited time provided for consultation with affected groups during the process of legislating for [the] water services reform.” Well, you pretty much couldn’t sum that up better, but that’s the reality.

So we recommend that we call this bill not the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill but instead the “Back-down Bill”, and we’ll be interested to hear contribution from those other members. Thank you.

On the name of the bill, “Water Services Entities Amendment Bill”, you could call it the “Back-down Bill”, Minister. It started off with four entities; now it’s 10. You could call it “Much More Expensive and Less Efficient Water Services Entities Amendment Bill”, Minister, because that’s what you said when you came to select committee. You could call it “giving up”, Minister—the “Giving Up the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill”, the “Let Me Out of Here (It’s Nearly 10 o’clock) Water Services Entities Amendment Bill”, Minister.

But when it comes to the time for implementation, that’s the problem with this bill. If there was one date that local government, professional services, engineers, maintenance contractors, communities could plan for—as there was in the original bill. I mean, that provides this thing called “certainty”; allows organisations to develop a pipeline of work; allows funders and financers, even, to say, “Hey, on a certain date, we’ll be there with some private, institutional capital”, as ACT proposes in our solution here, Minister—ACT’s solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature 30-year infrastructure plans. Private institutional capital to finance, to build out of the three waters infrastructure needed for growth and remediating the pipe networks in our major cities. But, Minister, even the time for implementation has blown out to the nether-nether. There was 1 July 2024; now it’s “Hmm, sometime between then and 2026”. Yeah, that’s assuming a whole bunch of other stuff.

Minister, this has been a very, very disappointing end to the water services reform programme, which I was informed about by Department of Internal Affairs officials in September 2020. There was no mention of co-governance then. It sounded like an eminently worthy concept, a laudable proposal. Where we’ve got to with this bill is not just disappointing, it’s a waste of tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to get it to this point—not to mention all the efforts and the good will of the officials, people who want to see good water reform, local government, and all of the stakeholders out there in communities who’ve put the time and effort into submitting on these bills.

And there’s two more bills. There’s the Water Services Legislation Bill. So don’t worry viewers, don’t worry listeners, it’s not over yet! The Water Services Legislation Bill and the “Water Services Consumer Guarantees or Economic Efficiency of Something Bill”. Anyway, consumer guarantees economic efficiency is done; this bill wrecks it.

So we’ll debate the others. ACT will offer our constructive suggestions. But, Minister, this bill doesn’t deserve to pass with whatever title.

Members, the House is suspended and will resume at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)