Water Services Acts Repeal Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The three waters reform was a highly bureaucratic, divisive, and unfair policy that appropriated assets from communities which had diligently built them up for generations. ACT has been consistent in our opposition to these three waters reforms, which we are now repealing. Our spokesman Simon Court said, during the first reading on 9 June 2022, that “ACT opposes … [Labour’s] three waters reform, and should we be part of a future Government, we will act to repeal it.” ACT stood against the original passing of the Water Services Entities Bill. ACT campaigned on repealing it during the election.

I am proud to be here today, by the will of the people, speaking in favour of the bill which repeals the original legislation. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Just made it in time. We are doing exactly, as a coalition, what we said we will do, what we campaigned, as you just heard, on repealing this legislation, which was, I think you would have to say, deeply unpopular and deeply divisive. We’ve heard a lot of different things from the Opposition benches about why this shouldn’t be repealed, and I have to say that none of them, if I may use the pun, hold a whole lot of water. [Interruption] Ha, ha! That one didn’t take any research at all.

But the first one, I think probably the core one that’s been talked about, is that rates will go through the roof. Now, we know that councils are going to be responsible under the legislation which is being repealed for at least the next two years for water. So talking about what’s going to happen to water bills, the rates bills, in the next year is kind of meaningless, because councils are still going to have water on their books for the next two years.

Then there is this thing about, well, rates are going to get much, much higher over a period of time, and it’s as though there’s a magic money tree that somebody is going to be paying for the water services. We know that there’s a lot of investment that is going to be needed in water. That’s very, very clear. The question is how much. But we know also that all of us are taxpayers, most of us are ratepayers, and all of us—I can guarantee all of us—are water consumers.

What we’re repealing is something where the bill was ultimately going to be changed. In fact, at the beginning, councils were still going to have to collect it, because the billing systems weren’t going to be set up. So it was still going to have to go through councils, and the original proposition was: councils, you’re going to have to bill people for something that you have absolutely no control over. It morphed into: councils, you’re going to have to bill people for something which you can have some sort of modicum of influence over. But they’re still going to have to bill people until billing systems are set up.

I think you could take it as read that water was going to have to be paid for through meters at one point in time, because otherwise you can have an unelected body, effectively, setting up some kind of rate. That’s not a very attractive proposition. So we’re going to have water meters in, and in some areas delivering water meters across the board is going to take probably a decade. It’s a very big investment proposition. But the key point is that people were going to have to pay.

We’ve heard some really big numbers talked about over there, and I can’t remember all the numbers—I think it was $9,000. Was it more—$9,000 more per household that I think Kieran McAnulty was talking about. But he did talk about one of them, which was Tararua District, and he said that over a period of 30 years it was going to cost, I think he said, $600 million, 12,000 households. You work that out—that is $1,666.67 per household per year. Well, actually, people are paying rates right now for water. Many of them are not paying much short of that. So that’s not actually a particularly astronomical sum.

The question you would always ask with these things is: what are the assumptions that you’ve built into the numbers that you’re talking about? One of the problems with the model that we’re repealing is that it was predicated on saying if we do this, if we make these things bigger, they’re going to be more efficient. Bigger is not always more efficient. We know that. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, but it’s predicated on that. And if you put a model in place which says we’re going to put in, I think it was, 4 percent improvement in efficiency every year in this model, but in the status quo or any other model we’re not going to recognise any possibility of any savings or any efficiencies, of course it’s going to look better. Garbage in, garbage out—and that’s basically the level of analysis that was done in that area.

Then, of course, is the very, very convoluted model of governance, which I think is part of the reason that they are over there and we’re over here today, because people didn’t like that. What that set up is two different classes of New Zealander. Some people—Willie may well like that, but I think most New Zealanders didn’t like that, and that’s why they voted accordingly. That’s one of the reasons that this Government said that it didn’t want to continue with that and is doing the repeal as it is doing the repeal today.

Hon Willie Jackson: You should hang your head in shame. You were a disgrace as a mayor.

ANDY FOSTER: Very kind of you, Willie, to say so. We were actually getting on and—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think we’ll cut the personal attacks, thank you.

Hon Willie Jackson: I’m just saying he was a disgrace as a mayor.

ANDY FOSTER: Well, at least I’m not a disgrace as a member, Mr Jackson, which you have been and have been all along.

Hon Willie Jackson: Sit down, you mug.

ANDY FOSTER: Madam Chair, I think that is unparliamentary language.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah. The Hon Willie Jackson, I would ask you just to tone down the language, please. Otherwise I’ll have to get you to stand, withdraw, and apologise if it happens again. Thank you. Continue.

ANDY FOSTER: So let’s be clear. There is no magic money tree in this. Somebody is going to pay for the water system. Do we need more money invested in water? Yes, we do. But, again, there’s this issue of potentially gold plating. So the legislation that we are removing went all the way down to literally: two houses made a water system—a small group of houses together. By and large, my understanding is that those people did not want the Government in some way or other intruding on their provision of their water services. Was the standard of water that we are looking to deliver reasonable?

I’ve also heard about getting water off the council’s books—getting water off the council’s books. Now, for councils that’s pretty attractive in some ways, because it means there’s a lot less discipline on them. But what you really need to make sure is that councils don’t say, “Well, we don’t have to pay for water now. So now our rates have gone down, we look much better, so now we can go and spend money on something else.” But the reality is, while it lets councils off the hook in that area, what it doesn’t do is let the ratepayer, the water consumer, off the hook, because that money is still coming out of their back pocket. and that’s what matters to people. If you’re looking at a cost of living crisis, the important thing is the total cost of living, and that includes both rates and water. We heard a little bit about what councils—

Hon Willie Jackson: Do you have an alternative? Do you have an alternative? I’m just asking, Madam Speaker, very respectfully. Do you have an option—do you have an alternative?

ANDY FOSTER: Madam Chair, I’m actually enjoying the interjections, because it actually gives me time, having just come from select committee to here, to actually look at the notes that I’ve got and get the computer working there.

So I also heard from the Opposition—I actually always listen very carefully to the people who are worth listening to on the other side. There’s this assumption that setting up the entities which were set up in the legislation that’s about to be removed—that somehow that was magically going to fix the pipes. Well, no, it wasn’t. You still need people to get out there and fix the pipes. So Ginny Andersen was talking about saying, “Well, you know, it’s going to take us 12 months to set these organisations up.”, but there’s still going to be water coming out of the ground in the meantime. The reality is that you still need people to fix those pipes. Setting up the organisations was not going to do that. All it was going to do is simply move—have I run out of time? Did the clock not work?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Keep going.

ANDY FOSTER: OK. Right. You still need the people to do that. You still need to build the workforce. And one of the things that we’ve heard—and this is right across the board, not just in water provision, but right across the board—is that we need a lot more people. We need to upskill our workforce to be able to do that infrastructure work. It doesn’t matter whether it’s roads, whether it’s housing, whether it’s water—all of those need trained people. So we need the workforce to be able to do that.

We’ve also heard a lot about balance sheet separation. Now, the proposition which we are repealing was based on borrowing an absolutely astronomical sum—something like $160 billion to $180 billion. So what that was doing, basically, is to try and kick off the cost of delivering our water system to future generations, and I don’t think that is particularly responsible. I mean, councils already borrow for the CAPEX to build and to fix and to upgrade water systems, so there might have been a marginal benefit there, but it would have been a relatively marginal benefit.

I’d also like to mention that for most councils, there will already be a significant amount of money in their long-term plans (LTPs) to upgrade water systems, and they are much more focused on that and they will continue to be more focused on that. As LTPs have rolled out this year, I’ve got absolutely no doubt there will be more money put in by councils right across the board to do that.

We’ve also heard from members across on the other side, from Julie Anne Genter. She talked about councils needing to replan because of this. I think the repeal of this was really, really well signalled by the coalition Government coming in. People could look at the polls and say it’s quite likely. In fact, councils have had to go through the whole process over the last little while of going: is the previous Government going to put their regime in place? What’s that regime going to look like? And, of course, it kept on changing.

So I think that this is quite appropriate now to repeal this and then to get on with doing the replacement legislation. We’ve had the timetable for that and we will get on and do that as the incoming Government. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

This next call is a split call, and I call Mariameno Kapa-Kingi.

Mōrena, Madam Speaker. Kia ora e te Whare. I like to think I’m going to be one of those who is listened to this morning. Mōrena tātou.

I’m going to frame my kōrero from Te Tai Tokerau in terms of our experience of three waters—and the rohe spans, if you’re not aware, from Te Rerenga Wairua tai te Atatū ki Tāmaki, so that’s a pretty big piece of dirt and that’s where I roll.

Te Tai Tokerau is particularly ticked off with this repeal and, actually, all the other repeals that are just rolling over us without any real debate and discussion, particularly with Māori and particularly with Māori from Te Tai Tokerau. If this continues, things like what happened at Waitangi, with 68,000 people rolling in—there’s probably more to come.

Te Tai Tokerau is ticked off, to be honest, and unhappy, mistrusting, and yet again isolated by this repeal process. Poverty in paradise—I want that to sink in. Poverty in paradise is where I live. This is not a pity party conversation; it is simply a fact. And when I listen to some of this discussion it just astounds me—the lack of reality. I don’t know where the privileged live, but let me tell you, it is not where I know, it is not where I live, and therefore, unless it’s appreciated in a real way, we will continue to be ignored and treated with the disregard that we already feel and have felt for a very long time.

Hapū, whānau, marae, iwi, Maōri businesses, Maōri providers, and Maōri entities are always prepared. We’re always prepared to take a risk because this is the opportunity—are they actually going to understand us? Do they really care and know about us? The general answer is no, because privilege blinds and literally you can’t hear us, and it blinds you to the real reality of what it is for whānau in the Tai Tokerau.

Yet again, we’re still prepared to take risks. We still think, “OK”, and ironically three waters was one of those. Three waters was one of those and so much so that we gave ourselves a name, Waipuna aa rangi. We got ourselves organised, we got ourselves from Tāmaki to Te Rerenga Wairua. So you had senior, senior Maōri leadership getting together and saying, “OK, is this the time? Is this the time that as Māori senior leadership we get together and we get ready, despite the delay on the other side in some other parties? Don’t know whether they want to—the other parties.” We as Māori leadership got together with our iwi leaders, our hapū leaders, and we decided to get a structure together, and we got that. And we called it Waipuna aa rangi. So we were feeling pretty pleased with how we were progressing this three waters programme.

Hon Willie Jackson: How dare you do that!

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: I know; the audacity, right? So we took the risk by agreeing to work together, to fight together, to organise and design together the state of infrastructure for water across the entity A rohe, which reaches from Tamaki to Rerenga. We set up our structure. We even dared, Willie, to meet the likes of the Department of Internal Affairs team on several occasions.

Hon Willie Jackson: Māoris are getting out of hand!

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: Exactly. I don’t mind these interjections; they’re quite nice.

But it makes sense to me, and the reason it makes sense to me is that it is understood in a very Māori way, and that’s the point that I often hear and heard particularly last night and the nights before—that it’s not getting understood. So I want to make those points.

We met with hapū, we met with marae—many marae; not all 219 but a whole bunch. We didn’t meet with all 31 iwi but as many as we could as we got ourselves organising together. Cyclone Gabrielle just came along and rolled us over and yet we continued to be ignored.

Let me just mention the Far North District Council. There is a $660 million infrastructure deficit and no one’s coming, except this repeal—to just land right on the top of it. So mayor Moko Tepania wasn’t in here yesterday, and he wouldn’t be because we met with him and we understand the reality of that Far North District Council. So when I hear this privileged conversation about, well, you know, “There’s someone throwing lawn cuttings over my gate; please, somebody sort that out.”, we are nowhere near that. We are a rohe that is devastated by floods. We don’t have enough water. When it’s summer it’s a drought, and all of those issues. We deal with those on a daily basis.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just a note to the member that her time has expired. Would you like to make your closing comments?

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: Yes. In Whangaroa we still have to buy and boil our water—we have to buy it and boil it. We don’t have the privilege of many others. We buy it in our shops, take it home, pour it into our jugs and we boil our water. What is that about? So in that regard and in all of my discussion this morning, we simply cannot support this bill. We reject this bill and do not commend it to the House—please; if anyone’s listening. Kia ora tātou.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. As the member Mariameno Kapa-Kingi has just pointed out, it’s about clean, safe drinking water; it’s about waste water that isn’t discharged directly into our waterways; it’s about stormwater that doesn’t contaminate the places where our kids swim. These are the outcomes that we and our communities so desperately need and want, and I want to thank the previous speaker for grounding that reality in Te Tai Tokerau as an example.

These are the things that are now further away thanks to the passing of this Government’s Water Services Acts Repeal Bill. I found it quite incredible to hear one of the Government members refer last night, during the previous readings, to the reforms of the previous Government as “an overreaction” to the Havelock North tragedy, when thousands of people got sick and people lost their lives from the water simply coming out of their taps.

The inquiry conducted, as a result, estimated that as many as 100,000 Kiwis get sick from drinking contaminated water every year, and more recently the Ministry of Heath’s report on drinking water found 21 percent of our population here in our purportedly clean, green Aotearoa received drinking water that was not demonstrably safe. We don’t have to look any further than what happened in Queenstown in November and December, with cryptosporidium poisoning and months of boiled water notices, to face the reality that (a) these issues still exist—and this was a very well reported one, but we know that they exist around the country every day—and (b) these failures of political inaction and decades of under-investment impact not only the health of our people but our environment, our economy, and our international reputation.

So, no, I don’t agree with the member that these water service reforms of the previous Government were an overreaction. But the repeal of these bills certainly is: a knee-jerk, misinformed overreaction that takes us further away from effective water services that deliver for human health and don’t pollute our previous te taiao along the way.

My fellow members and I asked a multitude of important questions throughout the prior readings and committee of the whole House, and they were still left unanswered. And they were really basic, reasonable questions about Te Tiriti rights being protected, and the implications for councils who were right in the middle of their long-term plan consultations—the most important conversation they had with their communities in the entire term, when ratepayers suddenly find this Government is saving money by passing the cost on to ratepayers.

The Minister was asked many important, relevant questions, and had very little to nothing to say in his answers. And I suspect they’ve gone unanswered because this Government simply doesn’t have the answers—because their entire policy platform is based on empty rhetoric with no substance. Well, luckily, the way forward, which this Government is welcome to pick up—nau mai—is pretty clear. It’s elements like governance structures and the delivery and implementation of services that uphold tino rangatiratanga of iwi Māori and hapū under Te Tiriti. It’s things like enabling strong local voice to have meaningful influence on decisions, and giving local government the tools for funding and financing to actually avoid raiding their communities into oblivion. It’s about nature-based infrastructure solutions, integrating it all with good land-use planning and spatial planning, and, hey presto, you’ve got a long-term way forward.

The Aotearoa that I and so many Kiwis want to live in is where we don’t have fear or doubt about the water coming out of our taps, or question whether our kids or pets will get sick from just coming into contact with our waterways. This repeal keeps this Government on track for getting us back to nothing but the same old political inaction and indecision, leaving our kids, grandkids, and future generations to ultimately pay the price, and the Green Party wholeheartedly opposes it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Water Services Acts Repeal Bill. One thing about democracy is it is a contest of ideas and we’ve heard that playing out in the debate this morning. This is only a few months after the election where all of the coalition parties campaigned on doing what we are doing right now. The people spoke, and the people gave the coalition an overwhelming victory, and we’re delivering on our promises. That’s something that the National Party, the ACT Party, and New Zealand First will do: we’ll make promises and we will deliver on them. So, with that, I commend the bill to the House.

What a disgraceful, shameful day for this Government. This is such a shameful day. Particularly these Māori members—

Jenny Marcroft: Pick another word.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —they should hang their heads and shame. Jenny Marcroft, you’re a disgrace. You’re a total—do you laugh away? But this Government only knows how to tear things down rather than build New Zealand up.

Now, what was this all about? What was this all about? This National Government doesn’t even know. Why are they repealing the Water Services Act? Well, that’s right: because all the Māoris are going to steal the water and that’s why they’re repealing the Act. That’s what they’re responding to: they’re responding to all the Māoris are going to steal the water and they’re responding, sadly, to their racist supporters who were running these lines, running the issue up, they were running these lines in the region. It’s shameful. Jenny Marcroft knows this better than anyone. She was part of Labour at the time—and trying to join Labour at the time. So she knows of the racism that was happening out in the regions. It’s a spiteful policy from the right. It’s a reactionary response.

Now, Labour, we foresaw this—we foresaw this. We embarked on a water reforms programme. As the Opposition will know, John Key’s Government sold 49 percent of our hydro water assets and triggered a Māori claim on water that the Waitangi Tribunal ruling told the Crown that Māori did have an interest in water and that it was the Crown’s obligation to work it out. So that’s what this Labour Government was attempting to do, and I want to mihi to our tuahine Nanaia Mahuta for her courage in driving this kaupapa. What was Nanaia Mahuta’s big sin, everyone? Oh, that’s right. She wanted a partnership with Māori and the Crown. Oh God, it was so—that was so scary. It was so shameful. How dare Nanaia go down that track—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Full names.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —of trying to get a partnership with Māori and the Crown and trying to balance things in terms of water. Oh, why wouldn’t you have Tainui and Ngāi Tahu involved in trying to solve this water problem? They’ve got quite big asset bases. This bill was always going to be huge and Māori do have a relationship with the water that the Opposition had forgotten—particularly the Māori members, as I said, who should hang their heads in shame—and so how dare this Minister go down that track. And what did Nanaia Mahuta get for that? I ask Māori members here today: what did she get? She got the most shameful, racist attacks in the history of this Parliament—in the history of this Parliament. She was attacked, personalised, compared to apes—gorillas—it was a bloody disgrace. This Parliament should hang its head in shame in terms of the attacks on our tuahine. So today I want to mihi to her. I want to mihi to her for her courage, for her bravery, for her strength.

E mihi ana ki a koe, e te tuahine, mō tō kaha ki te kawe i tēnei kaupapa, ki te kōkiri i tēnei kaupapa i ngā wā katoa, ahakoa he nui te whakaparahako ki a koe, Nanaia, e tika kia mihi ki a koe mō tō kaha ki te tautoko i tēnei kaupapa mō ngā iwi katoa.

[I acknowledge you, sister, for your strength to carry this initiative, to progress this initiative at all times, despite the scale of the discrimination of you, Nanaia. It is appropriate to acknowledge you for your strength to support this work for all people.]

It is appropriate that we remember that, particularly members on this side who saw what she went through and had to put up with this rubbish from the other side. We saw the three waters billboards—it was a bloody disgrace. They can laugh about it or whatever, but I want to mihi to her and mihi to Kieran McAnulty, who took up the challenge and tried to explain partnership, tried to explain co-governance; that it wasn’t going to bring the nation to its knees like the disgraceful former Mayor of Wellington tried to say earlier today.

In terms of National, it’s a punch in the face for Māoridom and a slap in the face to domestic water users. The National Government, with support from ACT and New Zealand First, live in a magical fairy world where a lack of new funding for water infrastructure and no Government guarantee on the new entities will all be unbelievably solved by local councils. The Auckland Council has already said it’s impossible for Watercare to be carved off without a Government guarantee, which is something the Prime Minister and the wonderful local government Minister has ruled out. They want to set up a system, but they don’t want to pay for it. Instead of protecting domestic water users from enormous jumps on user-pays this right-wing Government is promising them. That’s where we’re going: it’s all user-pays. The Prime Minister refuses to tell Kiwis how much his expensive water policy is going to cost, alongside the inevitable legal action from Māoridom. We know there’s no alternative.

Where will the Prime Minister and local government Minister be when the local elections are on? I think we’re all going to get the popcorn there because we’ll know that we’ll be debating a water crisis that this Government has manufactured. Will the Prime Minister and the local government be explaining to ratepayers—here’s the big question: will they be explaining to ratepayers how their rates have just exploded? I can bet you right now that the PM and local government Minister won’t be anywhere near this deeply flawed water policy once ratepayers and renters see the spike in prices.

How on all earth is this Government going to convince bond investors and rating agencies to lend to these new water assets without a Government guarantee? These are some of the questions that we put through committee. So why are we on the left having to lecture our friends on the right about capitalism? I mean it’s amazing, really, how the left have to look after the right—

Hon Phil Twyford: That’s all this comes down to.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: It’s incredible, isn’t it, Phil Twyford? We already have to lecture them on race relations. Now we have to talk to them about the basics of capitalism. But the left, I suppose, will always have to do that to people on that side. There’s no new money for investment, and without any Government guarantees you can’t get an investment. It’s pretty simple.

That side of the House doesn’t care because, as we all know, they’re all rich cats on the other side who can afford to pay their water rates—all rich cats. They don’t want to know about the average person and they don’t care if the rates go up because, politically, they can say, “Well, it’s all the council’s fault. It’s not our fault, it’s all the council’s fault.” We know the kōrero that’s coming. They’re screwing the scrum—they’re screwing the scrum, the former disgraced Mayor of Wellington. They’re smearing—and the former disgraced Jenny Marcroft from Labour.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! No personal—keep the standards up, please.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: OK, Madam Speaker. Thank you. But they’re screwing the scrum, Madam Speaker. They’re screwing the scrum against ordinary Kiwis. In terms of this, it’s more important for the right to repeal the Water Services Act and cause all the damage that it will do, just to placate their far-right thinktanks and their redneck supporters out in the regions.

Hon Member: That’s most New Zealanders you’re blaming.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, it’s not most New Zealanders. Most New Zealanders don’t care. Most New Zealanders care about water, and we will be found to be on the right side of history.

That side of the House sold this water reform as stealing the water for Māori and they’re now left with a system that will not work. You mark our words: this is a Government that only knows how to tear down, and when they do build it’ll cost Kiwis an arm and a leg. We know this. We know that this will be true.

I think that it’s been one of the saddest campaigns that I have witnessed in many, many years. The irresponsibility from that side, it will all come home to roost because we know the three-headed monster on the other side just will not be able to cope and manage the type of criticism that will come their way once the rates go up. The people will not put up with it. They will realise the real agenda of the right was always to privatise the water. We know that that’s where it’s going. We know it’s going; their whole front was “Boot the Māoris, boot the Māoris, the Māoris are trying to steal the water.” But we know what the real strategy is, and it’s about those rates going up. It’s about placating their rich right-wing thinktanks. A shameful, shameful day for this Government, who should hang their heads in shame.

I commend the Water Services Acts Repeal Bill to the House, because we don’t agree that the only option is to take assets away from all the ratepayers. We believe that there is no one plan for all, especially not coming from the central government here at Parliament. So let the local councils do the work to service their own people. I commend this bill to the House with my full support.

This call is a split call—I call Ingrid Leary.

One thing that’s really certain about what this Government is doing is they are putting up rates for ordinary New Zealanders; they are putting up rents for people who will be at the brunt of those costs, ordinary New Zealanders; and they are setting up councils to fail. It is such a shameful day. I echo the words of my colleague Willie Jackson: this is such a shameful day.

If we look at why the affordable water reforms were set up, we had people dying from contaminated water in Havelock North. There were four deaths in 2016; there were 5,500 people who got sick. This is a matter of fact; it is a matter of record. We’re not making these stories up.

Then we had, last year, stormwaters in Auckland. A lot of the waterways were blocked. We had 10,000 properties affected. We had $1.5 billion worth of private insurance payouts so far—that’s just so far. People saw cars swept down the road. Lots and lots of displacement, lots of anxiety, lots of mental health issues as a result of those storms. And guess what? With the repeal of this bill, much of that problem is not going to be resolved. In fact, the Auckland Council predicts that another 50,000 properties are at risk if there is going to be another weather event like that. With climate change, you can guarantee that is going to happen at some point.

What Labour did was follow up on years of planning. There was very careful stewardship, there was careful analysis, there was data gathering, there was legislation that was written up. There was a lot of thought and planning into scale and efficiency—how we could resolve this problem using scale, using efficiency, using mechanisms such as balance sheet separation that worked—so that we could get an intergenerational solution to the problem.

We had Te Mana o te Wai, which was explained simply in this House as just putting the importance of water at the centre of the legislation. There is nothing scary about that. We had a management system for stormwater in Auckland. We looked at the special needs of rural communities, of farming communities that had invested into some water supplies that had different needs from urban communities. We had a consumer protection system in place which meant there would be inclusion; that people would not be left out and be unable to afford water; that there would be a fair pricing and charging system; that there would be an element of user-pays. This was done through very careful management, and what happened last year was an election and there was a cynical, racist strategy from the parties on the right—a misinformation campaign. Because there is nothing easier as a way of scaring New Zealanders than to pull out the old race card and start to have a personal vendetta against the Minister who was leading the charge, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta.

We had thousands of submissions. I sat on the select committee—I had the privilege of chairing the Finance and Expenditure Committee for some of the process—and we had very thoughtful and considered submissions. But we also had thousands and thousands of form submissions basically promoted by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. But we listened, and on that committee we realised people wanted more local voice. So the system was changed in order to be able to facilitate that local voice. That is what good governance is. Instead, what happened is the right got in, they had a coalition agreement which said, “We will agree to repeal this even though we have no idea what we’re going to do to replace it.”—no idea, no plan. “We’ve got in, winning at all costs.”, which is the strategy that the right has used. Suddenly they realise they’ve got to do something, so what are they going to do? Ram through this repeal bill with no select committee stage.

Hon Member: Outrageous.

INGRID LEARY: Outrageous, after all the years of work that went into it; no select committee stage and no plan and, now, setting up councils to fail.

We’ve seen it from the Minister. From the moment he met with Tory Whanau from the Greens, the Mayor of Wellington, to try and show that he was a strong Minister, he was going to blame the council already. The writing was on the wall: this Government is setting up councils to fail. We’re already seeing the rates response; double digits. That is going to affect pensioners in my electorate, it is going to affect first-home buyers, it’s going to affect ordinary New Zealanders, and most of all, in my view, it’s going to affect renters because those costs will be passed on.

This is an assault on ordinary people. It’s an assault on the vulnerable. It’s a shameful day and I am so disappointed in the process this Government is using.

“Stop three waters! Stop three waters!” Can’t we remember those signs? Can’t we remember those signs on the gates of farms all round New Zealand, on the fences of Auckland flats, on the overbridges of our provincial cities and towns? “Stop three waters”—it was a huge campaign. Only 26 percent of New Zealanders, at its peak, supported three waters, and, ladies and gentlemen, Madam Speaker, three waters is gone by lunchtime. This is a Government that’s delivering in its first 100-day plan. This is a Government that’s listening to democracy. This is a Government that believes in localism. We have worked with local government and a number of people across this country to get to where we are at, and local control of water assets, local ownership of water assets, is coming home.

The confiscation of local water assets continued despite their rebranding—and we remember their rebranding, but this three waters policy of theirs was very unpopular. It took out two local government Ministers. It took out two Prime Ministers. It took out one Government. It also took out the local government Ministers’ seats—they also lost their seats at home. That’s how unpopular it was. New Zealanders did not want it, and this Government is going to deliver on a much better option, with a technical advisory group that is going to blow Mr Jackson’s mind. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, thank you. Our system of water infrastructure in New Zealand is utterly broken. Too many New Zealanders simply don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water, and colleagues in the House have given examples of that this morning.

In our biggest city, the failure over multiple decades to invest in waste water and stormwater infrastructure means that our streams, our creeks, our bays, both of Auckland’s wonderful harbours are chronically polluted with the sediment and the heavy metals that run off our streets. Whenever it rains—whenever it rains—beaches are declared off limits. You can go to the council website and see it. The red flags go up. It’s not safe to swim in the harbours around which our biggest city is built. There’s something really shocking about that.

The other big problem that we inflict on ourselves as a country because we don’t invest in adequate water infrastructure is that the lack of pipes for drinking water, for waste water, for stormwater is a handbrake on the building of new homes. It’s one of the main reasons that our towns and cities do not grow in response to demand. Houses don’t get built, and every time that happens, the price of housing goes up and our families get poorer and homeownership rates go down and more people are homeless. There’s a direct connection between these things.

Labour’s affordable water reforms offered a solution to these: publicly owned organisations with the scale to be able to make the investments and run systems and network infrastructure to deliver water; balance sheet separation that would have increased, by a factor of two or three, the amount of money the water entities could borrow to make the $185 billion investment and spread that cost over generations; a legal framework that, for the first time ever, would have provided accountability and a mandate to water entities to do the job that so many councils simply haven’t been doing because they’ve been unwilling to invest; and two regulators: a regulator to set standards—environmental standards and standards to keep the water safe and clean—and an economic regulator to make sure that these entities actually behave in an efficient way, handle public resources with responsibility, and were responsive to the people in our communities, to the consumers of the water.

But this National-led coalition with ACT and New Zealand First is sweeping all that away with no credible alternative put before the people of New Zealand. It is the most cynical example of short-term, petty, partisan politics at the expense of what’s good for our country. That side of the House should be embarrassed by that. They should be ashamed.

They are keeping the regulator, Taumata Arowai, to set those standards, but they are giving councils no tools, no ability to meet those standards. So what’s going to happen? There’s only one thing that’s going to happen—or two things, perhaps. The first is that councils will be forced to put the rates up. Double-digit rates increases, year after year—that is what’s coming, folks, and in many cases we will not see the progress that is needed towards cleaning up our waterways, delivering safe drinking water for our communities, and futureproofing our cities against the floods that we will increasingly see as a result of climate change.

This Government will simply shrug and say, “It’s the councils’ problem—nothing to do with us. Oh, yeah, water, and rates to generate the revenue that’s needed to build pipes—that’s the councils’ problem. Don’t come to us, it’s not central Government’s problem.” That’s what they’ll say, and the poor old ratepayer and the communities all over this country who don’t have access to safe drinking water and live alongside polluted waterways and suffer extreme flood risk—they are the ones who will carry the can. It’s so cynical.

Let’s talk about balance sheet separation. It was the key to unlocking financing so that that $185 billion could be invested in bringing our water infrastructure up to scratch: separating out the water entities’ balance sheets from councils so that the rating agencies would not punish them with lower debt limits and higher borrowing costs.

How many times did we ask the Minister—in the committee stage last night, how many times did we ask him what his advice was, what his plans were, about balance sheet separation? At least six or seven speakers got up and directly asked the Minister. He was evasive, to say the least. He was not forthcoming with the House, in spite of being asked more than half a dozen times, what his advice was about balance sheet separation.

We’ve got a number of senior National Party figures on the record saying that they would deliver balance sheet separation as part of their plan. We’ve got Chris Bishop, the infrastructure Minister, now saying that. But yesterday, both the Prime Minister and the local government Minister ruled out any kind of Government guarantee for councils. That Government guarantee to say that if a council or a council water utility was in financial strife, the Government would back it up and help it out—that guarantee is a prerequisite to balance sheet separation. If they’re ruling it out, there is no balance sheet separation, but the Minister would not say that in the House last night, although we gave him multiple opportunities to answer that question.

The result of this bill being passed will be huge ongoing increases in the rates for the next generation or two. That is the reality: massive increases in rates. I predict that there will not be the progress that our country needs on fixing the broken infrastructure that we currently suffer from. In my community, I fear we will not get the investment and the improvement in stormwater infrastructure that is needed to prevent a recurrence of what happened a year ago where a thousand people in my electorate, a year ago, suffered catastrophic flooding—water inside their homes—and many of them have spent the last year living in sheds and sleepouts, suffering financial hardship because of that. We all know—the data is very clear—the climate is changing and that kind of occurrence is going to happen more and more.

Auckland Council has not and is not making the necessary investments to futureproof our city against that kind of flooding. It is only the kind of financing and institutional framework that our Labour Government put in place last term that would allow us to meet that. The current Government is offering nothing—nothing—in the way of funding and financing that will futureproof our cities for climate change.

I fear that under the repeal of this legislation and under this Government’s policies, we will not see the investment in waste water pipes in our biggest city to avoid what constantly happens where we see raw sewerage pumped into our streams and our creeks and our harbours. The community that I represent is sick to death of raw sewerage floating around into Wai o Pareira, the waterway that runs through the middle of West Auckland.

Jenny Marcroft: Why didn’t you do something, then?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It’s an absolute shocker—and we did do something about it. We put in place the financing, the funding, and the institutions to fix this; that side of the House is repealing. They have no plan to replace it. It is purely an example of cynical partisan politics at the expense of this country’s future.

Many councils will be breathing a sigh of relief. Many communities will be breathing a sigh of relief. They can now feel assured that the control, management, and ownership is retained where it should be: local. We campaigned on this bill, which repeals the three waters legislation that the other Government introduced, a piece of legislation that was unpopular to many, including many councils.

We are now on the way to providing a solution to our drinking water, our waste water, and our stormwater challenges. This bill, along with the two other proposed bills being introduced later on this year, will provide all the tools and legislation required to finally get our water infrastructure up to scratch and back on track. And, Cameron Brewer, you’re absolutely right. Look at the clock: gone by lunchtime. And for that reason I’m very happy to commend the bill to the House.