Sage Eugenie; Rurawhe AdrianHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Clean safe drinking water is a basic human right but it's one which many people across the world and a significant number in Aotearoa New Zealand don't have access to. What this bill aims to do is to provide the regulatory framework to help correct that. There are approximately 1400 community water suppliers in Aotearoa and they vary from those neighbourhood suppliers servicing 25 to 100 people to municipal suppliers servicing more than 10000 people. Fifty-three percent of drinking-water supplies rely on groundwater 26 percent on surface water and 21 percent on rainwater collection systems. I was privileged to join the Health Committee to consider this bill. There were 977 submissions and we heard oral evidence from 130 submitters. I really acknowledge the other members of the Health Committee ably chaired by Dr Liz Craig the secretariat the departmental staff in Department of Internal Affairs and some in Taumata Arowai the new water services regulator and Parliamentary Counsel who have done a huge amount of work on this bill but also I really acknowledge the hundreds of people who made submissions from iwi and marae trusts individuals councils rural water suppliers and the detail and practical information that they provided to the committee to enable us to get a really good context. So the 24-page committee commentary which the select committee has provided summarises the changes that we've made in response to submissions and as the Minister noted our recommendations I think have substantially improved the bill.The Green Party hopes that this bill delivers on its purpose of ensuring that drinking-water suppliers provide people and communities with safe drinking water and that they protect the sources of drinking water. Taumata Arowai was established as the water services regulator through new legislation last year which set out the objectives functions operating principles and its governance arrangements. It's got an external board. It's got a Māori advisory group to give advice on how to best enable mātauranga Māori tikanga Māori and kaitiakitanga to be exercised and this bill sets out the regulatory regime that Taumata Arowai will administer its specific responsibilities and powers and the duties of drinking-water suppliers and local authorities. It also sets out some quite comprehensive regulation-making powers to help implement the new regime and provides for operational oversight at that national level of both the stormwater and the infrastructure network. I note that Supplementary Order Paper 602 that the Minister has tabled which significantly expands the oversight of waste-water services and when 25 percent of waste-water services are on expired consents I think that is really useful. This bill is a major step forward because there has never been a national regulator with such significant powers particularly in the compliance monitoring and enforcement area before. The Ministry of Health has had some powers but not these really strong compliance monitoring and enforcement powers. And I think one thing is that the three waters changes that the Government is proposing—some have suggested particularly Canterbury mayors that we hit the pause button on those. I can see some merit in that and letting Taumata Arowai get established particularly with its expanded oversight now of waste water and stormwater and seeing how the system improves and have a substantial conversation about funding because the billions of dollars of investment that is needed in three waters requires Government to ensure that there is more funding made available to councils. But this water services bill will be implemented alongside new national environmental standards for sources of human drinking water. It requires that drinking-water suppliers must provide safe drinking water they must meet drinking-water standards and they must take action when water is unsafe. They must also ensure that there's a sufficient quantity of water to meet the ordinary needs of consumers they must have a drinking-water safety plan and a source water risk management plan and they must register with Taumata Arowai when there are risks to public health. On this issue of the registration the National Party has not been listening. There is a substantial Supplementary Order Paper where the Minister has taken on board the concerns of a lot of the community and rural water suppliers and has pushed out the deadlines for when these small suppliers must register to four years and when they must provide a plan to seven years. They should be able to get themselves organised in that time. I acknowledge that the National Party is saying we should have gone on field visits but a lot of the submitters from the rural sector provided very detailed information about how their community schemes operated.The Green Party supports those small suppliers being part of the bill because we know that they rely a lot on voluntary hours we know that they rely a lot on community input and there is a concern about the cost of registration. But as the Havelock North inquiry found many small communities have drinking water which does not comply with the national drinking-water standards because there is no regulatory oversight of them and the Ministry of Health does no compliance reporting on suppliers which serve less than 100 people. Why should we consign a lot of rural people to having water that cannot be assuredly safe? So that's why we think those suppliers should be under the scheme and that the Minister has recognised the concerns about the regulatory costs by pushing out the deadlines. One of the other areas that we're really pleased about is the source-water risk management plans and that's in clauses 41 to 45 of the bill. We think these are some of the most important provisions in the bill because if we control land uses if we prevent nitrate and sediment contamination of waterways if we protect the services that Papatūānuku provides us as humans for free we secure our future and honour the natural world that sustains us. So the bill aims to ensure that the risks and hazards to source water are identified assessed managed and monitored by drinking-water suppliers and local authorities and that regional councils regularly publish this information and measure those risks and hazards. We hope that will mean there'll be much more scrutiny of land-use activities such as dairy intensification which contribute to a major cause of nitrate contamination of waters. The select committee also really engaged with the submissions from Māori from marae and iwi trusts and their concerns about warrantless entry for Taumata Arowai compliance officers. The recommended change is that these powers of warrantless entry be removed so that marae effectively have the same status as private homes and dwellings. I think there were over 33 submissions on this alone. The other issue in terms of responding to community water suppliers those smaller suppliers is that our amendments suggest that Taumata Arowai have a greater power to exempt classes of suppliers and that also Taumata Arowai have much more flexibility around its review of drinking-water safety plans and compliance monitoring so that as the Minister noted these are proportionate to the scale complexity and risk profile of the drinking-water supplier. So this flexibility the work that Taumata Arowai is doing alongside people in the sector alongside Irrigation New Zealand and others to develop flexible solutions to develop off-the-shelf solutions we think will provide the flexibility to enable community suppliers to continue to operate. And I think it is irresponsible of the National Party to threaten to block this bill and oppose it—well not block it to oppose it when they set up the Havelock North inquiry when they have made many statements about wanting to ensure that drinking water is safe and now they are potentially opposing it when there have been some significant changes to the bill as introduced to respond to the submissions from smaller rural suppliers and community water suppliers.So the one other final matter is residual disinfection. Most of the 229 submitters on this issue opposed chlorine being added to their drinking water. The Christchurch City Council presented evidence that there were fewer breaches of drinking-water guidelines in Europe and the UK where residual disinfection wasn't required compared to the US where it is and the city council in Christchurch wanted a greater focus on risk management because of the complacency which can result by relying on chlorine. The bill does provide that suppliers can apply to the chief executive officer of Taumata Arowai for an exemption on a case–by-case basis and the committee has recommended a further change that there be an ability to exempt classes.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.