Statutes Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to Part 41. This is the debate on clauses 168 to 173, “Amendments to Water Services Act 2021”.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Part 41 stand part. I call the eager Rachel Brooking.

I’ve stood on all sides of this House talking about variations of the water services Act and I will come to a reference to some recent amendments in a moment, maybe.

My first question is about clause 169, amending section 25 of the Water Services Act 2021: what is wrong with the “the”s? That’s my question. The change here is that “the drinking water supply” is being changed to “a drinking water supply”. I just want to know what the problem is that this change to the “the”s is going to rectify. I note, of course, that there are a lot of references throughout the Act to “a drinking water supplier”, but, of course, that’s the entity rather than the actual supply. So that’s my first question.

I have second question; it’s a very easy yes or no. It’s just that it seems that at clause 173, the amendment to replace “changes” with “charges” is a simple typo because all the other references to “c” words with an “h” in them in that section are “charges”, not “changes”.

And then, I guess, my final question is relating to clause 171. This again appears to be a typo issue because the word “issue” is in the heading in relation to compliance orders, whereas in the text below, it’s talking about “serving”: the service of a compliance order. I have a small point on that, that the Minister might or might not be able to comment on, and that is that amendment to section 120, where I think this drafting error was made, looks to have been inserted on 27 August 2025. I’m happy to be corrected on that. I’ve just been looking at it on my phone and I’m wondering if this is a case of—I can recall speaking on some large Amendment Papers to this legislation—this coming through an Amendment Paper at a late stage or if it has always been in there and nobody picked it up.

I’m going to work through them one by one and please feel free to stand up if I don’t get them all. I’m going to start with clause 169, section 25(3): the “the” and the “a”. It’s all about consistency. So as you mentioned, “a” is throughout the bill, so all they’re doing is changing “the” to “a” to have consistency. It has no policy implications at all.

In regard to clause 173, amending section 200(2)(c): yeah, that’s fixing human error—“charges” and “changes”, it’s as simple as that. Clause 171, amending section 120: you may have raised a point that’s actually been raised by another member earlier this evening on another clause, where there has been consequential amendments from other pieces of legislation. If that is indeed the case here, like I think it might be, then this just means that this is no longer relevant because it’s already been sorted. I’m of the understanding that the Parliamentary Counsel Office have made some changes to legislation that has gone through during the time that this bill has been going through its process. Just recalling that this bill was initially started under Labour, so it has been sitting for quite some time. So if it has been updated already, it will be inconsequential to this.

Part 41 agreed to.

Part 42 Amendments to Wildlife Act 1953