SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I'm pleased to take a call on the Water Services Economic Efficiency and Consumer Protection Bill. The Green Party will be supporting this bill. Obviously we need an economic regulator and we need some consumer protection mechanisms because these four new entities—given that Labour has the majority to get the legislation through—will each service between 800000 and 1.7 million customers. They'll be big organisations and big organisations are not always the most efficient. They can have quite cumbersome bureaucracies they can have additional layers of management and they can have inflated overheads. And when you're a big entity and when you're in a natural monopoly there won't be the same incentive to be innovative to maintain and operate assets cost-effectively and you won't have the ability that citizens have at the moment when they have an issue with their three-water services to raise it with their elected representatives whether that's a member of a local board or a city councillor. And certainly in Ōtautahi Christchurch the city council has an enormously effective snap send solve system where if you see a problem with leaking water pipes you take a photograph you email it through and usually a short time later it gets fixed. So where you've got this natural monopoly no alternative suppliers the entities would be able to charge unjustifiably high prices or provide a level of service which is below what citizens expect.And if I can just quote from the regulatory impact statement (RIS) which really summarises the need for the bill Without a fit-for-purpose economic regulation and consumer protection regime the potential consumer outcomes (in terms of factors such as price service quality infrastructure resilience and network reliability) could be worse than under the current system. This would undermine the outcomes that the reforms are intended to achieve particularly given the loss of existing accountability through elected territorial [representatives]."So if these changes are going to happen then we really do need this bill because we need to protect citizens when they are operating as water consumers. And there's an emphasis in the bill in terms of transparency and accountability through using the Commerce Commission with its experience in regulating other sectors through having a water commissioner on the board or the commission to actually have a greater focus on water services and the bill does build on some consultation that was done in 2020.It's also important because there is as the RIS notes a lack of robust information about the current state of three waters assets though I think that there's been more information being provided by councils to the Department of Internal Affairs recently. But just for citizens knowing the state of their pipes and knowing the investment that is needed is important—as it is for the equity markets because the whole premise of the reform is that these entities will be able to borrow quite substantially and in the absence of economic regulation the credit rating agencies and the debt markets aren't going to have clear information about the risk associated with the entities. They will need that information for the entities to be able to obtain finance.So both elements of this bill—the economic regulation and the consumer protection—are critical. The consumer dispute resolution service is something the Green Party supports because while you can go to councils at the moment you won't be able to under the new regime. And while the Taumata Arowai—when it was established there was a backstop consumer complaints service there. If people have got concerns about drinking-water quality the quality of their supply they can go to Taumata Arowai as the drinking-water regulator but Taumata Arowai can't deal with issues like billing and just the continuation of the supply. So that's why we need this consumer disputes resolution service.There are a number of issues that the Finance and Expenditure Committee should look at closely. One of the issues I think was one that Mr Bayly raised in terms of whether the entities are investing enough because we've had the Office of the Auditor-General as an Officer of Parliament warning local authorities over a number of years that they weren't investing adequately in three waters infrastructure they weren't providing adequately for depreciation of that so whether the economic regulator has a role in that space is an interesting issue for the committee to consider. So I look forward to the bill being improved as Barbara Edmonds noted through the select committee process and to submissions."