Local Government (Water Services) Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on behalf of the ACT Party to the Local Government (Water Services) Bill, first reading. It’s an important bill to set up a regulatory framework for water services delivery. It makes clear that councils need to provide an assets condition register and also a plan to show how they envision investing for long-term upgrades and maintenance and capital upgrades. The water services providers are natural monopolies and so having a strong and credible regulatory framework is vital.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, we all agree that more investment is needed in the three waters and that, actually, long term, that’s been something which has been under-invested in by local government, but lest central government get too above itself, central government’s asset management is even worse than local government’s, so I think we’ve got a job to do there.

We’ve been lectured through the day, particularly during the Fast-track Approvals Bill, about not listening to submissions, and I’d just like to remind people as I speak, about the number of submissions that there were on Labour’s Water Services Entities Act, which we’ve heard is so popular! There were 680 submissions in support of it, there were 160 neutral submissions, and 85,584 against—99 percent opposition. And did they listen? Did they what! No, they did not. They did not listen to the councils at all. It was one of the things that absolutely split local government. These guys do not want to listen to that—it is an inconvenient truth for them.

Not only have we been lectured on that, Labour’s model was very, very expensive: $185 billion, they were talking about. They were too invasive. They went down, at one stage, to two households being managed by the State. It was ideological. We’ve already heard about the co-governance arrangements which racially divided New Zealand. Even the courts—even the courts—when three brave councils went to court, found that it was appropriation without compensation. That is theft—theft. That is what the last Government was indulging in, and that is what they should not have been doing.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Now, time to go on to the modern bill—you’ve had an hour and a half.

ANDY FOSTER: That’s exactly what I was about to do. In comparison—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): A minute and a half.

ANDY FOSTER: In comparison, this legislation leaves assets with the communities and the councils that have built them up over the last 150-odd years. It gives councils the choice over their delivery arrangements. It allows councils to set statements of expectation to guide the water entities. It is subject to the disciplines of the Commerce Commission and the Water Services Authority—Taumata Arowai, which I think will be a very good discipline on them. And there is a lot of transparency requirement on them. It ring-fences finances, which I think is an excellent thing to do. It also clarifies one thing, which I don’t think Labour ever actually managed to do, which is to allow water companies to charge for water services—and also, I think, very pleasingly, to be able to charge for development contributions, which I think is a very, very sensible thing to do.

It allows for waste-water standards to be set by Order in Council. Labour was asking where does—you know, how’s this going to save money? That’s one of the places it might well do that. It also allows, by Order in Council, national engineering standards, which I think will be very, very helpful to councils in saving money, and protect against privatisation. I look forward to the passage of this bill through the House and through the select committee. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou katoa. The context of this is, and I’ve heard it referred to briefly in terms of the numbers, where I come from, Te Tai Tokerau, in a cute little place that Peeni and I know, which is Kaeō—25 years on boil-water notice in one tiny little place, in Kaeō. Te Kao—no different; you have to either buy your water or boil it, and clearly this is what this bill ignores completely.

This, in my opening discussion, brace yourself—Māori erasure, a theme extended into even water services. I know I can feel people prickling, but just hold on. The alienation of te iwi Māori from the Local Government (Water Services) Bill is merely a continuation of the infringements on the rights of tangata whenua under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, just to throw that in. The key difference between the previous reform—and I’ve got some experience in that, because 11 iwi across the Tai Tokerau tae mai i Waikato tae atu ki Te Reinga [Northland from Waikato, all the way through to Cape Reinga] combined under a body called Waipuna aa rangi in the three waters gig, and we thought, “Let’s give this a go. Let’s do our best, because we are our own solutions.” Well, that’s been taken away and shut away, because good ideas that are designed and delivered by Māori clearly don’t make the cut with this current Government.

The Government’s current repeal replaces policy—the previous reform recognised and provided for te iwi Māori. It does not in this bill—it does not. In fact, it ignores it and puts it to the side, but we’re kind of used to that. It’s been a year of that. The ongoing Crown position that everyone owns the water is designed to extinguish the rights of tangata whenua. I don’t know how many times you need to say this for the left side of the House to actually sink in and understand that at a very fundamental level. Clearly, if you don’t have the capacity to do that, you simply can’t get it, because you have an already always listening, an already always racist listening, which is to—

Andy Foster: That’s not racist—everybody has the water.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: Well, you can’t say that, can you? When you’re a Pākehā guy, you just can’t say that, so let’s move along.

Nowhere in this new bill—nowhere in this new bill—are council obligated to consult with te iwi Māori. Nowhere in this bill. For this reform to be successful, she says laughingly, negotiations between Government and hapū and iwi have to occur. They have to happen, but they don’t, not really. They might say, “Oh, look, I’ll choose that Māori or one that’s part Māori. Let’s choose the part Māori and let’s talk to that bit and see what we get across the line.” There might be people in this House that understand the concept of part Māori. It astounds me, whatever the hell that is or whatever that is—sorry, Mr Speaker.

This is exactly what the Waitangi Tribunal recommended to our last Government during the establishment of three waters. The Crown should be working directly with hapū and iwi to create a standard process for addressing Māori rights. I’m not going to hold my breath and nor are the 100,000 people that visited recently to say you were utterly mucking up and let’s think about this and try to have a decent and Treaty-based conversation, but that’s unlikely to happen.

For the most part, local councils are expected to join or establish new water services entities labelled as council-controlled organisations who are funded by grants by the Government. For these organisations to secure funding from Government, they must have no link to council or council decision making. Try and figure that one out. What this means is that these organisations will, in part, be privatised and entirely separate entities from council. Be aware that this partial privatisation is the stepping stone for complete privatisation of water as a whole. The danger in this is that our water is then managed and owned not by ourselves but by companies and organisations who will likely lead the erosion of water as belonging to the people and instead will prioritise corporate interests over our welfare.

Our position of the party is unequivocally in opposition to this bill. This Government can send their agenda of Māori erasure down the pipeline out of the three waters they intend to manage. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on this bill. There’s been quite a number of speeches tonight; some have actually been on the subject the bill is covering and quite a few have not.

I think the best feature of this bill is that it ring-fences the funding that is collected from rates for water services and ensures that those funds are spent on water services. The best example of that not happening is only a few metres away, out on the corner of Hill Street and Molesworth Street, where there’s yet another leak in the water pipes in, what is it, the only green council in New Zealand, which has the worst water services in New Zealand—very poor management. This is a great bill, and I commend it with pleasure to the House.

It’s pretty clear that Stuart Smith, the previous speaker, hasn’t talked to the mayors across the top of the South, because they are not happy with the arrangements that this Government has come forward with and I’m going to talk to that.

People have been talking about the levies that are going to be paid to Taumata Arowai, which are greater than what would have been paid under Labour’s plan. The primary amount of that money is going to actually go to the Commerce Commission for the regulation that they do of the water regulation system. We heard about Palmerston North having to pay $400,000 a year. In Nelson, it’ll be $200,000 a year, and in Tasman, it’ll be $350,000 a year. Nelson Mayor Nick Smith even went on to say that the Government is overreaching with the proposed new levies.

What I’ve heard from our local mayors across the top of the South is that it’s yet another cost being put on to the—

Jamie Arbuckle: That’s not right.

RACHEL BOYACK: Well, this is what’s being reported in the media, so are you disagreeing with what the media reported?

The mayors across the top of the South are deeply concerned about two things: one, the cost burden being passed on to them and therefore on to the ratepayers; and, secondly, the structural arrangements. It is an absolute cluster that we’re going to have a water system set up and a structure set up in Nelson where Nelson and Tasman aren’t working together. It’s absolutely bizarre.

When you look at the shared services between Tasman and Nelson, the waste-water Bell Island treatment plant is jointly owned by Nelson and Tasman. It takes waste water from Nelson—from Richmond, from Brightwater, from Wakefield, and Māpua—yet Nelson and Tasman aren’t going to be working together on water even though they actually co-own assets together. It’s utterly bonkers. Let alone that Tasman provides water to Nelson for the Whakatū industrial estate, which I’m really pleased the Labour Government put money into for the three waters systems to help protect it so that it doesn’t get millions of dollars of damage during flooding—one of those things we paid for. Tasman provides the water to that estate in Nelson as well as homes in Nelson South, where I live. Yet, somehow, we’re not going to have a shared Nelson/Tasman water service. It’s bizarre. Tasman’s probably going to go with Marlborough and possibly going to go with Buller, so we’ll have the top of the South but no Nelson.

Now, the advice that Nelson has received shows very clearly that by going alone they will end up paying more—and myself as a Nelson ratepayer will end up paying more—than under Labour’s plan. That’s the advice they’ve got. They’ve chosen to go alone instead of actually working together across the top of the South. I know that the Minister actually wants to see councils working together. Every other part of the country, we are seeing councils get into groups together because it brings down the cost to the ratepayer, especially when you have bizarre situations—absolutely bizarre situations—like Tasman providing services to Nelson, but, somehow, we’re not going to work together.

The Minister was very forthright about how he’d saved everything for Auckland and cost Auckland all this money. He might have saved Auckland money, but money is going to be lumped on to the rest of the country—the people in the provinces who are going to have smaller asset bases, greater amounts of debt, larger areas to cover, fewer people to actually pay for the water services. All of those small councils are going to end up paying significantly more than under Labour’s plan. That’s what all the evidence actually shows and the Minister’s refusing to engage in that conversation.

Funnily enough, so much of what the Government is actually putting in place through all of the bills is comparable to what Labour did, but the missing piece—the missing piece—is the sheer number of councils you actually need to have in the room together to get the economies of scale so that you can make the investment you need. I think the cluster that is happening across the top of the South, where we’re going to end up seeing—who knows whether Buller and Tasman and Marlborough can even get together. If they don’t, we’re going to end up with four small councils all operating on their own and every ratepayer paying a significant amount of money without being able to sort out the nonsense, because they have to work together because they actually have shared ownership of assets.

For the Government to think that somehow they’ve come up with some magic solution that is better than Labour’s plan, when the people in the top of the South are going to be paying significantly more money, is absolutely bonkers, and I do not commend this terrible bill to the House.

I rise to support the Local Government (Water Services) Bill. Look, it took the last Government six years and $1.2 billion to come up with an undemocratic, highly controversial, co-governance model. It has taken our Government 12 months to put water back in local ownership, have a democratic process, and come up with a regulatory framework that is going to work. It’s outcomes, it’s solutions, it’s democratic, it’s local ownership. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am having some déjà vu from earlier times in the House today, where the Government members say, “Oh, Labour did this review and it was all terrible, but aren’t we great? We’re so good at repealing things, and now we’re going to replace them with something in the Resource Management Act space over and over and over and over again. We’re going to do that and somehow it’s going to work.” Well, this does not fix any of the problems; all it does is cost ratepayers more in the longer term. It is shameful.

Hon Member: It’s your favourite word.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Now, we know—oh, I hear a Government member say that’s my favourite word. It is my favourite word at the moment because what this Government is doing is shameful: going around telling councils, “Oh, you can’t do pet projects, but we’re going to do every single pet project we want to do on our fast-track legislation.” It is shameful.

Oh, the Government members say “We’re somehow going to magically fix the funding for water pipes and treatment stations.”, and what happens? Nothing. All that this does is we know that there’s a problem with balance sheet separation—

Hon Barbara Edmonds: We knew that.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: We knew that. We’ve known that for a long time. We know that economies of scale can be a good idea, as well.

All that this Government is doing is saying, “Oh, councils, you can look after that water infrastructure that you’ve always been looking after and haven’t been properly funded for and is degrading and is not maintained. We’re not going to give you any of the tools, like balance sheet separation. So we know that the ratings agencies will downgrade you. We know that the money will cost you more. We know that all this will do is put more money on ratepayers.”

Then the Minister says, “Oh, but we’ve done a deal with Auckland.” As if that solves the problem!

Hon Barbara Edmonds: What about Whangārei?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: “What about Whangārei?”, Barbara Edmonds says. What about Northland? These are very good questions, and they are not solved by letting Auckland, of course a very large and significant council with significant assets and very large interceptor pipes going in at the moment, which will hopefully decrease the runoff into the harbour—these do not fix the problems of Northland; Northland with the low ratepayer base, Northland with a lot of problems that we all know about with their pipes and treatment stations, and have done for years and years. The Auckland deal doesn’t fix any of that.

We know that there’s $185 billion needed over 30 years to upgrade our pipes and treatment stations. What has the Government done? Oh, the Government’s looking at long-term plans, and what is the time frame for a long-term plan? Is it 30 years? No. Is it 20 years? No. It’s 10 years. So, of course, the figures are different. That’s all that this Government does: changes the target, changes the numbers. It doesn’t fix the fundamental problem; instead maybe the Clutha council will go bankrupt. That is what this Government wants to call “localism.”

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Shameful.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Shameful. Now, we’ve also heard in a lot of speeches from Government members that somehow—somehow—this legislation is going to solve things because it’s going to ring-fence money for pipes and that that is somehow going to fix councils’ financial woes. Councils already spend about 90 percent of their money on pipes and treatment stations and roads. I don’t think that even includes waste. These are not frivolous “nice-to-haves”; this is the basic infrastructure. They are already spending all their money on that. There is no magical pipe-tree provided by this piece of legislation. It doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t help Northland.

Hon Peeni Henare: It does nothing.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: “It does nothing.”, as all of my colleagues are saying. This bill doesn’t fix the problem and it will cost ratepayers more.

It’s great to be one of the last speakers in the first reading of the third one of these bills—the trilogy, if you will—and, frankly, I think it’s just time for me to get out of the way and let it flow. I commend the Local Government (Water Services) Bill to the House.

The question is, That the Local Government (Water Services) Bill be considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.