Water Services Acts Repeal Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Water Services Acts Repeal Bill.

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

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I move, That the Water Services Acts Repeal Bill be now read a first time.

This bill embodies the National Party’s commitment to repealing the previous Labour Government’s divisive and unpopular three waters regime. It marks the first step towards implementing Local Water Done Well—our plan for addressing the country’s longstanding water infrastructure challenges. I want to start by acknowledging the commitment and support from our coalition partners, the ACT Party and the New Zealand First Party. I also want to acknowledge a number of mayors who are in the House here today and who have come to Wellington to witness the passing of this piece of legislation.

This bill serves multiple purposes. Firstly, it repeals the Labour’s three waters legislation, thereby removing the 10-entity model which prescribed co-governance, and this will ensure water assets remain under the local ownership of local councils. Additionally, it halts the establishment of the economic regulation and consumer protection regime for those 10 mega, bureaucratic entities. Secondly, this bill disestablishes the Northland and Auckland water services entity, ending the costly and unnecessary activity involved in setting up this body, including significant IT contracts. In December last year, it was revealed that the previous Government’s reforms cost the country an eyewatering $1.25 billion while achieving very little. The termination of this work is anticipated to save a further $343 million, aligning with our Government’s objective to curb irresponsible spending.

Thirdly, the bill relieves pressure on councils that will now need to include water services in their long-term plan (LTP). Councillors are in the midst of preparing these plans and require direction and support to plan for and finance water services that they will continue to hold responsibility for. The bill provides a range of options that recognise that different councils will have different needs and preferences and will be at various stages of developing their long-term plans. The options include having an unaudited LTP consultation document, adopting the long-term plan for up to three months later than usual, or deferring the 2024 LTP by one year and preparing and consulting on an annual plan for 2024-25 instead. This is about providing flexibility to councils. All of the options are voluntary, and councils can choose to use them or not, depending on their local circumstances. Unlike the former Government, which came in and mandated the approach on local councils, we instead are taking the approach of flexibility in terms of this particular issue. The bill provides much-needed clarity about the choices available to councils, in addition to standard processes and what is required if particular options are taken up.

Repealing the previous Government’s three waters legislation is just the first step in our plan. The coalition Government is committed to addressing New Zealand’s longstanding water infrastructure challenges. While some communities operate and maintain efficient, high-quality water services, we cannot ignore the fact that many are struggling to maintain and upgrade critical water infrastructure and fund new investments. There is a pressing need for futureproofed reform in our water infrastructure in the face of aging assets, inflation, population growth, and regulation. With Local Water Done Well, we will enable councils and communities to determine what works best for them while establishing clear expectations and bottom lines. The Government’s plan for water reform will require councils to demonstrate how they will meet strict regulatory standards that ensure safe, resilient, and cost-effective water services. This approach will improve transparency, accountability, and efficiency by identifying where there are areas that can be improved. And, as outlined yesterday, we’ll be doing this through a two-step approach.

The next piece of legislation will be passed through this House by the middle of this year. It will deal with issues in regard to how councils can more efficiently set up council-controlled organisations. Currently, when they set up a council-controlled organisation, each council has to consult separately with its local community. This will include changes which streamline that process and enable them to be able to consult widely across the region or amongst the councils which want to work together. It’ll include elements around the requirements to put forward their financial sustainable plans to demonstrate what they’re doing to be able to meet the requirements, so they have long-term sustainable plans. And it will have the first steps towards ensuring that we deal with Watercare, to ensure that Auckland Council is able to have balance sheet separation for Watercare. This approach will improve transparency, accountability, and efficiency for those local councils in the investments that they’re needing to do.

The second step, in terms of legislation, will be another bill, coming to the House later this year, which will have more detail around setting up specific balance sheet separated council-controlled organisations. It will include full regulation under the Commerce Act for these water entities to ensure that they’re investing responsibly, that prices are set appropriately, that infrastructure is not gold plated but that they’re pricing appropriately, and that investment is done over a long period of time, so that we improve the water infrastructure that we have here in New Zealand. And I look forward to bringing those future pieces of legislation to the House.

Our Government aims to set standards for critical infrastructure delivery, focusing on value for money, investment to drive economic growth, productivity, and quality of life. Taumata Arowai will continue to retain its role as the water-quality regulator and will be tasked with setting safe water standards and overseeing that for local councils in a proportional way which meets their needs. Economic regulation will play, as I said, a key role in ensuring that the necessary investment in infrastructure is made without making charges unaffordable. Clean, quality water is a fundamental expectation of every New Zealander. Changes are needed to build better water services for current and future generations, and this is what Local Water Done Well will deliver. We do not need more centralised and bloated bureaucracies, which is what the last Government imposed on local communities but after six years failed to deliver. Instead, central government will provide the tools for local government to deliver and the oversight necessary to ensure an efficient system.

To those who voted for the National Party, the ACT Party, and the New Zealand First Party, we have delivered on our promise to end the last Government’s co-governed, mega entities, mandated three waters regime. We will now begin the process of implementing Local Water Done Well so that local councils are able to invest in the long-term infrastructure that they are responsible for. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The issue facing this country in regards to water services is one to the tune of $185 billion. It is quite telling, I feel, in a speech where the Minister introduces a bill that will repeal a structure that will save ratepayers thousands of dollars a year, come 2051—no details as to how his proposal will save ratepayers the same, no detail at all. Because the issue that the Government has is the same issue that they had throughout the campaign: they’ve promised everyone everything and eventually they won’t be able to deliver.

They promised that local control can be maintained. They’ve promised that local ownership can be maintained, and they’ve promised that balance sheet separation will be a key feature of it. Yet we’ve seen no details as to how that is going to happen. And that is very consistent with the history of the National Party’s position on water reform. Originally, it was: “We will repeal.” When it was pointed out the cost that the status quo would impose on ratepayers, they changed their view to: “Repeal and replace.” We asked them a very simple question: “Replace with what?” And here we are today, with a repeal bill being introduced with no details whatsoever as to what the replacement will be. I feel it is quite simply because they cannot deliver on all the things they have promised—they cannot deliver it.

A very simple question for the Minister of Local Government, which I look forward to hearing at the committee stage, is: how is he going to deliver balance sheet separation when the very advice from his own department says he cannot have direct council control ownership and balance sheet separation? We saw alternatives put forward during the debate—and I will give Communities 4 Local Democracy credit, and I recognise that some of those mayors are in the Parliament tonight. At least they came up with an alternative. Throughout the debate, the National Party had no alternative, and, lo and behold, what they signalled when they announced the repeal is very similar to—almost exactly the same as—what Communities 4 Local Democracy put forward. And good on them, they’ve been effective in their advocacy. However, my concern is that on the Department of Internal Affairs website there is advice for the Minister that says that approach will not work and will not deliver balance sheet separation, which is a critical part of ensuring that water services are done affordably.

Now, I can see this is a confusing, complicated debate. It is very technical, and the solutions are convoluted, but it doesn’t mean that this Parliament should allow the issue to be pushed to the side, downplayed, and left for future councils to deal with. Because that is the reality. What the Minister is setting up is that when unaffordable rate bills come for many councils, he will be able to say “That’s a council issue.” Right throughout this debate, when the original reform proposals were made, the National Party promised councils that they would help them pay for it. They went around the country, they said, “Don’t support the water reforms because we will do it differently and we will help you pay.” Well, that is a broken promise. That is a promise that they never intended to deliver and they haven’t delivered on now.

You only need to look at statements made by senior members like Matt Doocey, who stood up and promised councils in this House—in fact, I believe it was in this seat. He stood up in this House and said to councils, “We will help you pay for it if we are elected.” Well, they’re elected now and there is no help. There is no financial support. And when it comes to affordability for ratepayers, they are being sold a dud. It’s the mayors and it’s the councillors and it’s the ratepayers who will cop it. Because councils cannot do this by themselves. They cannot do it without balance sheet separation. Mayors and councillors will be forced to increase rates, they will cop it from ratepayers, and ratepayers will cop it in the back pocket. All of this could be avoided if the Government was upfront with New Zealanders and said, “If we want balance sheet separation, you cannot have direct council control.”

But even now, in the face of advice from their own departments that said they cannot do it, they are ignoring that fact. This will not work. And when ratepayers face bills they can’t afford, they can look back on this day and see how that came about.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Everyone has a right to—and deserves access to—clean, safe water. Unfortunately, past decisions and political inaction has meant that that is not currently the case for many of our communities across Aotearoa. Our waste water and stormwater networks and systems need to be designed and managed responsibly so as not to damage and degrade our environment, and in a way that is integrated with the actual environment in which the infrastructure sits and in a way that upholds Te Mana o te Wai. Again, past decisions and political inaction mean for so many of our communities and for te taiao—our environment—that is not the case.

These are the basic issues of what the water service reforms were seeking to address. The repeal of these bills today is definitely getting us somewhere. It’s getting us back, but not on track like this Government purport to be doing. It’s taking us backwards away from our water service and environmental goals. The Minister just talked about flexibility for local government. What I see and what we see is that he and his Government are dishing out uncertainty for local government, right at a time when they are consulting on what is often the most important conversation they have with their communities in their entire term: their long-term plans. Ultimately, councils will then be faced with putting in place higher rate rises, meaning higher costs for households who are already stretched to the limit.

Investment in water services matters and it is urgent, especially in this climate-impacted world. As droughts, flooding, and other pressures become more common, water infrastructure needs to be resilient to climate change—again, something that becomes further out of reach with not only this repeal today but with the Government’s reckless repeal of the Spatial Planning Act, which would have provided a much more integrated approach to water service infrastructure and land-use planning that we so desperately need. Water is a taonga, and hapū have always exercised kaitiakitanga over water. As we face the challenge of improving our water infrastructure and a changing climate, iwi, hapū, and whānau should have a governance role that recognises kaitiakitanga and whakapapa connections to wai.

Whatever this Government proposes ahead—and we don’t yet know what that is—we strongly support effective co-governance for management of water. However, given both the Government’s response to these bills passing in the first place and their current proposals that threaten Te Tiriti and the rights of iwi Māori, we have significant concerns about the coalition Government’s fear-mongering approach to co-governance—or, given we live in Aotearoa New Zealand under Te Tiriti, one might more accurately call it governance. The Green Party wants to see us grow up and move forward as a country with a management approach that embraces Te Mana o te Wai and that leads entities that deliver genuine partnership with local iwi and hapū.

The legacy of our under-investment in water infrastructure is significant, not just for our people but for our environment too. This Government’s approach of repealing these reforms under urgency is yet another missed opportunity, taking us further away from community resilience, further away from protecting our environment, and further away from allowing Kiwis access to their most basic rights of safe, affordable, reliable water. The Green Party will once again be pushing to not let these immensely important fundamentals be overlooked. Thank you.

Mr Speaker, thank you. The ACT Party offered to work constructively with the previous Labour Government on developing a sustainable three waters reform model, but what the previous Government did—and why we’re repealing this three waters legislation today—was ignore offers to collaborate with councils and with all of those participants in the supply chain in terms of developing a reform structure that would be durable. Instead, they proceeded to introduce legislation that they hadn’t campaigned on and that the public knew nothing about, which introduced concepts of co-governance over publicly owned water assets.

This concept of Te Mana o te Wai, which is an anti-scientific concept that was going to be embedded in the legislation—when I’ve spoken to councils around New Zealand, what they’ve told me is that under that previous legislation, the legislation that’s going to be repealed today, even if we treated the waste water to drinking-water standards under Te Mana o te Wai, that flawed concept, we wouldn’t be allowed to discharge treated waste water into lakes or rivers. Now, this Government has a different approach. We believe in science. We believe that by making good investments in infrastructure, councils can deliver clean drinking water and deal with waste water and stormwater effectively.

Now, it’s true that some councils haven’t done that, but when presented with the glaring problem such as all the water leaking out of the pipes in Wellington, even a Green Mayor of Wellington has had to accept that councils have a responsibility to invest in underground assets like three waters assets.

Mark Cameron: Plumbing—piping.

SIMON COURT: Plumbing—you could call it the city plumbing. Instead of going after all of these other Green dreams like walking and cycle projects, councils will now be getting back to business and focusing on what’s important, which is managing assets well.

Steve Abel: Where’s the money coming from?

SIMON COURT: Oh, this member here—Mr Abel—asks where the money is coming from. Well, guess what? Who pays for water? The consumers of water could pay. Some councils say that their ratepayers should pay. Under the previous Government’s three waters model, who knew who was going to pay? But what’s important is that if you’re receiving an infrastructure service like water to your home or business, if you’re flushing or you’re sending stuff down the trade waste pipe, it’s pretty clear that the user should be the one who pays, and that is why even some of those who have been almost religiously opposed to water meters in the past have had to accept that metering water is one of the ways of actually working out how to reduce use, how to manage down leaks and wastage, and how to link who uses it with who pays. Now, that makes perfect sense to most New Zealanders—if you use the water, you get a bill and you pay—but it’s been an absolute revelation to the anti-business, anti-capitalist members of the Green Party who sit here in Parliament.

So, if we think about who’s going to pay for water infrastructure going forward, one of the problems that this Government intends to solve is that with this massive deficit, this under-investment in existing infrastructure and in maintenance and renewals, combined with the need to provide water infrastructure to enable growth in our largest cities and in our new, fast-growing metros like Tauranga, the money needs to be raised to pay for these long-term assets, but they are long-term assets. These are assets that have 50-, 100-, 200-year lives. It makes no sense at all to force ratepayers of today to pay over a period of three or 10 or 15 years for an asset that has a very long life.

So, for one of the problems that this Government intends to solve, one of the ways to do it is by establishing council-controlled organisations who can make these long-term investment decisions, raise long-term debt, and make sure that the cost of those assets is spread over a fair amount—

Steve Abel: Privatisation.

SIMON COURT: —of time, and not lumped on current users, Mr Abel. Mr Abel talks about privatisation. Well, what’s been very clear in the commitments made by this coalition Government is that water assets will not be privatised. But if this member wasn’t aware of it, the contractors who turn up to fix the water pipes are, typically, private sector contractors. They’re subcontractors to councils or to larger firms.

If you’re going to insist that this drinking water and all of these water services don’t cost anything, then you’ve got it dead wrong. The users will end up paying whether they’re ratepayers or whether they’re getting a bill based on their water meter. What New Zealanders will have is much better water services as a result.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I’m delighted to speak to this and support the repeal of Labour’s three-headed taniwha of three waters legislation. Look, there’s no question that there are real issues with water infrastructure around our country; but, actually, that’s true of many other aspects of infrastructure, many of them run by central government, of course. But Labour’s centralisation, “We know best”, was not the right way of doing it.

The last Government, as we know, spent $1.2 billion—if you’re going to be more efficient about doing something, spending $1.2 billion without even having it set up doesn’t strike as being efficient. But trying to bulldoze that through against what they knew was significant opposition around the country—certainly from councils, who owned the assets, but also from the public as a whole. And that $1.2 billion, of course, does not include the costs to other parties, such as councils.

It was Chris Hipkins who acknowledged that “We didn’t take the people with us”—“We didn’t take the people with us”. And no, they didn’t take the people with them. In fact, they built up more and more opposition. I suspect, had they not done what they’d done, they may not be where they are now—on that side of the House.

I also want to acknowledge, as some others have—some of my friends and mayors up in the gallery there—I want to acknowledge you for your brave, courageous, and steadfast fight for what you believe was right on behalf of your communities, to say that we as communities want to be able to have a say over and control the direction of the assets which have been built up for generations and generations of ratepayers and water consumers in your area. So congratulations to you all.

Three waters was mis-sold. We can all remember the wonderful advertising campaigns that the last Government put out. They, basically, blamed local government—there were dying fish all over the place—for poor asset management. It started off as a voluntary opt-in scheme, so councils would be able to choose to opt in if they wanted to. Then it changed to be an opt-out scheme. Then, of course, it became compulsory. That’s really good-faith bargaining! And that’s one of the things that is wrong with this.

Secondly, when the pressure came on around co-governance, there was all sorts of dissembling about saying, “Oh, it’s not about co-governance. This is not a problem at all because look at co-governance of various rivers, various mountains.” This is completely different. This is co-governance of services which serve every single New Zealander. Those New Zealanders have built those assets up, and yet the Government wanted to expropriate them essentially without compensation.

And then we kept hearing about Havelock North being the reason for all this massive change right across the country. Well, with all due respect, if that was the problem, it was a massive overreaction. So what was wrong with it?

Chlöe Swarbrick: People died.

ANDY FOSTER: Well, if that was the problem, then we close our roads down tomorrow, but we don’t do that either, do we. It was ideological, centralisation, one-size-fits-all, the establishment, for of all of four entities, and then 10 big entities. And we heard the Hon Kieran McAnulty talk about all the savings that were going to be made. Well, the reality was that if you put in massive gains in efficiency into one model but you don’t put them into any other, of course you’re going to make it look as though it’s cheaper. But I think that was mythical. We’ve already seen, as I said, $1.2 billion spent on going, essentially, nowhere.

It was also based on massive borrowing: $180 billion—$180 billion—and you think that’s free? Where’s the money going to come from? Well, it certainly wasn’t going to be from some magic money tree. It was going to replace ratepayers with somebody—either ratepayers or water consumers; that hadn’t been decided. Quite clearly councils were still going to have to keep on charging for it regardless, until that had been worked out. Who was going to pay? Probably water consumers in the end, probably through water metering. By and large, those are exactly the same people as were paying for it already: the ratepayers. So there was nothing free. There is nothing free in this life, and there wasn’t there.

Then it was a massive asset grab, essentially—as I said—without compensation. The High Court actually recognised this. Again, I pay tribute to some of the councils who brought a case against the Government, and the High Court said, “Yes, this was expropriation.” Of course, it’s for Parliament to decide whether there was any compensation paid, but the High Court said, “Yes, this is expropriation.”, and I think this is a real concern: that a Government can just reach into and say, “Well, just because it’s local government, we can take your assets away because we feel like it.” That to me is wrong, and the High Court, effectively, said it was wrong as well.

So I’m delighted to see this legislation passed through here. It is the repeal of some very, very poor legislation. And I look forward to having a much more locally responsive way of making sure that we deliver good three waters for our communities up and down the country. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. E ara ake nei au ki te waha i ngā kōrero me ngā whakaaro o te iwi Māori e hāngai ana ki tēnei o ngā panonitanga ture e hāngai pū nei ki te wai Māori.

Kua roa nei Te Pāti Māori e tū ana i runga i te ōhākī o te Tiriti o Waitangi, me te kī ake nō te Māori te wai. I roto i tēnei rā tonu, e tohe tonu ana te Māori kia kake tōna tūranga i roto i ngā mana whakahaere, ngā mana whakarite i te wai. Hei aha? Hei painga mō te katoa.

Nō reira, anei rā ko ētahi whakaaro e hāngai nei ki tēnei o ngā pire, ahu atu i a mātou o Te Pāti Māori. So, e te Speaker, tēnā koe.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to convey the statements and thoughts of the Māori people with respect to this, one of the amendment bills that directly concerns fresh water.

For a long time, the Māori Party has stood on the final instruction of the Treaty of Waitangi, that states that water belongs to Māori. On this very day, Māori continue to fight to elevate themselves to positions within management authorities, organising authorities over water. For what purpose? For the benefit of all.

So here are some thoughts about this particular bill, coming from us of the Māori Party. So, Mr Speaker, thank you.]

Te Mana o te Wai—it’s a concept. It’s a concept, and it basically translates to “the importance of water”. Te Ao Māori is extremely invested in the importance of water. We’re completely aware of all of the debate around the delivery of water, around the nature of ownership of water, as quoted by our friend over here—not quite on the money but quoted nonetheless.

I heard today that three waters was quoted as being a “hugely divisive” policy. I think that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. It became a hugely divisive policy after a great big race war centred around Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Māori rights, and co-governance was propagated around the country. But if you refer back to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and understand that all of the rights that Māori had pre-existing European arrival were guaranteed to continue and be protected in article 2, your view might change somewhat.

But nevertheless, Te Mana o te Wai as a standpoint continues to be strong for te Iwi Māori and it will be the basis for Te Pāti Māori’s arguing for Te Mana o te Wai, and te mana o te Māori i roto i te whakahaere i te wai [the importance of water, and the authority of Māori in the management of water].

I might just also add that at this point in time, te Iwi Māori are not contesting the ownership of water, although there are many precedents set around this country already that would lead our friends on this side of the House to consider what they say about who owns water.

So Te Mana o te Wai—te taiao and the importance of te taiao. As the māngai of the New Zealand Māori Council for the last three years, I had the responsibility of presenting the New Zealand Māori Council’s views on Te Mana o te Wai, on three waters, and the nature and the place of Māori—Māori thinking, Māori rights, Māori solutions, in the improving of Te Mana o te Wai, the importance of fresh water to New Zealand. I can unequivocally say that Te Ao Māori has the solutions that our country needs. They are, of course, unfortunately not rooted in making money. They are rooted in delivering clean, fresh water that will sustain this land’s people and sustain this land’s environments. This is a phrase captured in this piece of legislation as “te mauri o te taiao” [the vitality of the environment]. I guess my friends on this side of the House wouldn’t understand a concept like te mauri o te taiao, but I can give you a quick little example. Te mauri o te taiao just requires that you place yourself on a lower rung on the ladder than everything else you rely on to live, nē? So money comes second. Maybe the health of your children comes first. Maybe clean water for everyone to swim in comes first, and delivering water for big business comes second.

These are all concepts that this House will struggle to deal with, will struggle to articulate, and will struggle to frame policies that deliver it. But we will be here to ensure that these messages are held high in this House, that they are delivered clearly in this House, and that this House does not get to continue on and disregard Māori rights in te wai māori.

Well, I might just conclude by directing my friends over here to a simple short clip that’s on social media. It’s Gareth Morgan, one of the leading economic minds of this country, describing Māori rights to water. And I’ll just summarise it by saying he concludes by saying this: “Māori own the water”. Now, as I said, Māori are not contesting the right to ownership of water—kia kaha. We are not contesting right to ownership of water; we are contesting the right to delivering Te Mana o te Wai, the importance of fresh water for every New Zealander, and the rights of te Iwi Māori in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to be talking on the Water Services Acts Repeal Bill. Having endured the 88,000 submissions through a long period on the Finance and Expenditure Committee that some of us endured—and I’m looking at the other side of the House here at Ingrid Leary who also had to endure that dreadful thing—it is an absolute pleasure to be talking today about repealing it. It was evident through the last term of Government what a divisive, dreadful piece of legislation it was—or three pieces of legislation—and what this proposed change, which the Labour Government sought to bring about, was causing in our communities. I acknowledge our council CEOs up in the audience.

The bill raised a whole lot of issues, but of specific importance to me are the issues relating to the Water Services Economic Efficiency and Consumer Protection Bill. My job is to work with Minister of Local Government, the Hon Simeon Brown, to bring about new changes, new rules in terms of economic regulation of the water entities that will be formed under our new proposal of local water made better. What we want to ensure is that New Zealanders do get access to high quality water, but we want to make sure that the decision making for that occurs at a local level.

The big issue with the previous economic efficiency and consumer bill was that it assumes that these entities were all about making profit and ripping off New Zealanders; that, of course, was the wrong approach and that’s why the overzealous economic regulations were totally inappropriate. What we will do is pare it back and make sure that we have adequate economic regulations that do ensure that councils invest properly to meet their minimum health standards, to meet the needs of their consumers. But, perversely, actually, the regulations are about making sure they invest enough, not ensuring that they make a profit—because, of course, they’re separated stand-alone entities; that is why they’ll be ring-fenced. That is not about profit maximisation; it’s about creating better infrastructure. I’m looking forward to doing that over this year and putting the proposals back into the House at the end of the year alongside Minister Brown.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the ability to take the call on this repeal bill. Before I start, I hope to indulge the House for a moment. It has been a year since Craig Stevens and Dave van Zwanenburg from Muriwai fire brigade passed away due to the events of Cyclone Gabrielle, so I want to acknowledge them and their families, and the fire and emergency crews across New Zealand, who are having their flags at half-mast today.

Though, we are here today and it feels very much like déjà vu on this side of the House, and also some déjà vu from when we were on that side of the House, that again we are going through another repeal bill, again another urgency, and again nothing, no solutions, from the other side of the House. The Minister of Local Government earlier today said there is a pressing need to move on these water reforms, and yet the bill that is tabled by the other side of the House is just the repeal of the previous Government’s bill, of the previous Government’s work. There has been no solution tabled today. So if there was such a pressing need, why was the Government who are now in force—why were they not working on something beforehand? Why, all of a sudden, is it that they say that we’ve been doing nothing for six years?

Well, actually, we’ve been doing a lot, and if you look at the Department of Internal Affairs website, you will see that there was a royal commission of inquiry into the Havelock North affair, which started in mid-2017. That needed to run its course. Then there were a number of officials’ papers and discussion documents and consultation that happened in that six years. The Hon Kelvin Davis, who is no longer a member of this House, said if things were easy then everybody would do it. Unfortunately, the problem with water reform: it has been kicked down the road for so long that it came down to the point where a Government, the previous Labour Government, had to take a stand and had to say we need to change this. We cannot have the situation where our children cannot swim in the beaches, in the rivers. We cannot have the situation where people are dying because of water. We need to ensure that our councils have the support in order for them to be able to invest in the infrastructure, because they all couldn’t afford it. They’ve got three council authorities who are within my area of Mana, and they are all in very different situations as to what they can afford. But the three waters reform project, affordable water, basically allowed the ability for there to be balance sheet separation, and, in the end, it’s the money that counts. There’s a Jerry Maguire movie where he says, “Show me the money.” There is no money in this bill.

I do remember the other instance of déjà vu I had was while sitting on that side of the House, watching the Hon Matt Doocey on this side saying, “When we become Government, we’re going to co-invest.”—that is on Hansard—and yet there is nothing in this bill. There has been no commitment since the election that that Government is going to co-invest with councils. Instead, they’re passing the blame now on to councils, and we saw that in question time today, where the Minister said, “We’re going to give it back to councils.”, and, basically, if the rates are going to go up—

Dr Tracey McLellan: Not their problem.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Not their problem, because they’ve given the responsibilities back to councils. That was the whole reason why we did those water reforms, to help ratepayers not see the large increases that they were going to see.

Standard & Poor’s have basically said that you need to have balance sheet separation in order for councils to be able to borrow more. If the Government’s going to go ahead with their current reforms, which, again, is at the moment just repealing a bill, Standard & Poor’s says the devil will be in the detail. There is insufficient detail here for any devil to be able to have a look at, and so it’s going to be really interesting to see how this Government comes up with a plan to save ratepayers’ moneys, because the Minister today said that rates are not going to go up—nevertheless that Far North District Council’s looking at 33 percent rate increases, the West Coast council’s at 30 percent, Hamilton at 25.5 percent, and the Mayor of Porirua just said today 18 percent. These are increases that are going on to ratepayers, that this Government has done none of the work on in order to be able to provide that pressing need, that pressing solution, except for removing an actual policy solution that has Standard & Poor’s stated approval, which allows a balance sheet separation so that those entities can borrow more to bring down the cost of that infrastructure project across the time so that it’s cheaper for our ratepayers.

So, again, we are here in a situation of déjà vu: no solutions, repealing a bill, and again in a situation where there were broken promises, where they said they would co-invest but the Government has not committed to it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on this repeal bill. I’d like to begin by acknowledging the mayors in the audience in the Speaker’s gallery, particularly one of my constituents: a mayor in my area, Dan Gordon, who I know needs special acknowledgement for all the work that he did in rallying the rest of the troops—those sitting with him—to get this where we are today and actually delivered a pretty good plan for the future. So thank you very much for the work that you did collectively.

This was a divisive bill—this was mentioned earlier by my colleague Andrew Bayly. In fact, it divided up Marlborough, and Marlborough ratepayers were going to be either on one side of the border and be in one entity or the other. It was incredibly divisive. No communities of interest were considered when these boundaries were set up.

I mean, as the great President of Argentina, Javier Milei, says, collectivism does not work. This was a great example of collectivism that would have spiralled out of control, and it needs to be repealed. I commend this bill to the House.

The one thing that is really certain about the lack of plan that the Government has over its water reforms is that there will be rates hikes. I could almost feel smug about saying that, if it wasn’t so devastating for the people that it will affect, which are ratepayers but, actually, also renters, because those costs will be passed on to renters. It really continues the assault that this Government has on vulnerable members of our community. Here I’m thinking about the people in my electorate of Taieri: pensioners, who at the moment are paying $1 in $8 to their council rates, who over the next 10 years face the prospect of $1 in $4, according to the maths done by Clutha mayor Bryan Cadogan. I’m thinking about families who have maybe just managed to purchase their first home, who are now dealing with the cost of living, who are thinking about insurance, who are thinking about transport costs, and who will suddenly be facing these huge rates hikes. And they will happen. In Clutha, they’re projected to be 20 percent, not just for this year—and I heard the Minister of Local Government say in the House that this is about the short term. This is over the next 10 to 12 years. There will be a succession of rates hikes.

In Dunedin, we’ve had councillors on the front page of the Otago Daily Times urging people to brace, saying that the rates hikes won’t be pretty, that we cannot afford the infrastructure costs—the flood of costs, pardon the pun—that will be coming our way. This is why southern mayors have been pleading for the affordable water reforms to stay. It’s because what is needed is scale and efficiency, and what the Government has said to date provides neither of those. When we think back to what the reason was for the affordable water reforms, it was not only Havelock North but, actually, what played out really significantly and devastatingly a year ago this week, around stormwater damage in Auckland.

Now, when we sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which I had the privilege of chairing, we put a lot of thought into changing some of the gaps that existed in the previous law, not just in the way that the legislation that came to us was formulated, to make sure that there was fairness in the way that stormwater systems were managed. It was a lot of the mismanagement of stormwater and the regulatory gaps that led to a lot of the devastation last year. So I’m looking forward to the committee stage to ask the Minister what he is going to do about managing stormwater now that he is pulling back those reforms and those suggestions that we as a committee made.

In Gore, 13,000 residents face $435 million worth of infrastructure costs with the peel back of the affordable water. That’s according to the mayor, Ben Bell. Tim Cadogan, Central Otago mayor, has described the rates hikes they will face as eye-watering. They’ll need to raise $100 million over the next three years from a ratepayer base of just 26,000 people. Three waters is a mess. The Government’s solution does not respond to the question of who is going to pay, and what the Minister has said is that there will be some kind of regulatory solution. That is a wholly inadequate answer. I’m looking forward to asking him, with these council-controlled organisations, how he is going to make them happen. What about debt-heavy councils? How will they raise more funds? What funding role will central government have? What is the most cost-effective way to raise funds? What are they going to do to deal with stormwater?

I was really surprised to hear Andrew Bayly talk about consumer protections, because he was very invested, in the select committee process, in ensuring that there were good and straightforward and streamlined consumer protections, which we managed to get through in that particular bill. To hear him now saying that he wants to go back to the drawing board is surprising, and I heard no plan from him about what he plans to do for consumer protection under these reforms. What we can see is that there is no plan coming from this Government. It is trying to stick to its coalition agreement to pull back the affordable water reforms. It doesn’t have a plan. It is trying to distance itself from councils.

I feel sorry for the mayors who are sitting in the gallery today, because I don’t think they’ll be around very long once they have to implement the rates hikes that they will be implementing in their councils. This is an assault on homeowners, it’s an assault on ratepayers, it’s an assault on renters, who will have costs passed on to them, and it doesn’t do anything to assure people that this Government has a plan for affordable water.

I am standing here to support the Water Services Acts Repeal Bill. I wanted to make a mention, when the member talks about the visitors that we have in the gallery—our mayors—about watching their back and no longer having a job, that she should probably look up. Because the mayors are really shaking their head and disagreeing with the member’s comments.

But I support this bill because there are many New Zealanders who have had enough of the lack of water infrastructure and the poor water planning locally. The last Labour Government, while they were in Government and in power, had all the time and resources and votes to do something, and they did not.

So I support this bill because many voters have openly called out for the last Labour Government to stop the mega-merge into the three—and then later, 10—services entities. All the talks, but no delivery. So I support this bill.

This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading