Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Madam Speaker—once I can get my mask disconnected from my glasses—thank you. Look it's a pleasure to take a call on this third reading of the Water Services Bill. It's not really a pleasure to be in this position that we're in because National is still opposed to this bill. It could have been quite simple to repair this piece of legislation so that we could have supported it because it does create a number of sensible duties and obligations for large water suppliers such as councils which are where more of our water contamination incidents and public health risks tend to originate. And so in light of that that would have been a reasonably easy bill to support. We support the formation of Taumata Arowai and we have no problem with people providing and receiving clean water and in particular clean drinking water in New Zealand.I was just interested in that speech from the Minister Hon Meka Whaitiri who spoke about this bill being not a significant change and yet the changes in this bill require people to register their drinking-water supply require people to prepare a drinking-water safety plan and lodge this with Taumata Arowai prepare a source water risk management plan establish a consumer complaints process and Taumata Arowai must review drinking water safety plans and monitor compliance. So therefore the Government is asking more than 70000 small suppliers to comply with these issues and then expecting Taumata Arowai to review those water safety plans and monitor compliance. Now where the confusion sets in after the speech that I just heard this afternoon after the Minister's saying that it's not a significant change—she said that this is practical it will be simple and they are going to make it easy for small suppliers. And then in the next sentence the Minister said they have extended the time for small suppliers to be part of this compliance to seven years—and we commended the Minister on that the other day—before the compliance sets in for the small suppliers. The Minister said it will give them seven years to understand it. So what I don't understand is if it's so practical and it's so simple and if it makes it easy for small suppliers how come it's going to be so difficult for those small suppliers that they need seven years to understand it.Now the reason we supported the Minister's Supplementary Order Paper even though the Minister didn't support Christopher Luxon's Supplementary Order Paper the other day was because it does give time because we actually think that Taumata Arowai has got quite a bit on their hands just trying to work through the process for the larger suppliers let alone the smaller suppliers. But what was interesting the other day also during the debate the other day in response to Penny Simmonds the very good National MP for Invercargill the Minister quoted from a letter from Federated Farmers from Andrew Hoggard and said I want to take from a letter I received"—and I'm quoting this now—"on 21 September from Andrew Hoggard national president of Federated Farmers the following quote and I apologise for the length of time taken to extract this quote for the committee's benefit. He has said: 'It is encouraging that compliance with acceptable solutions including end-point treatment will remove the need for drinking water safety plans and source water risk management plans and that consumer complaints processes will not apply to various small suppliers. We support more time being provided in the legislation for registration of water suppliers and we welcome your assurance that registration processes will be simple and free with templates and guidance available. Much will depend on the detail of acceptable solutions for small rural water supplies.' …" So in the quote that I've just read here Federated Farmers understand that it will be free with templates and there will be guidance available but much will depend on the detail. So over here I'm a little bit confused about what the detail is because what the bill says what Federated Farmers says the seven years—all of this stuff is starting to sound a bit contradictory which is worrying in itself.Then the Minister went on to quote: " '… Federated Farmers is committed to engaging with Taumata Arowai to ensure that acceptable solutions are fit for purpose and provide for safe drinking water at a reasonable cost with as little compliance hassle as possible. However at this stage at least there are still many uncertainties.' ". And she said "In saying that they've indicated at the end of the letter 'Thank you again for hearing our concerns and responding to them.' and they would welcome maintaining a dialogue with myself and officials to develop win-win solutions." Now we support win-win solutions on this side of the House but it was really interesting that I've just received an email last night from Federated Farmers who have quickly pointed out that there was a paragraph that was left out of the letter that the Minister read in the House in her response to Penny Simmonds last week. And that says "On balance Federated Farmers continues to prefer an exemption for small rural suppliers. Although we are open on whether the cut off should be 50 or a smaller number with a focus instead on education and information including developing best practice guidance."So over the course of the most recent lockdown Christopher Luxon and I started a petition and that petition gained over 15000 signatures in a relatively short period of time and that was supporting the Supplementary Order Paper that we put to the House the other day that the House decided not to support that any person supplying with end-point users of less than 30 should be exempt. I even went to the point of saying to the Minister on the day: if she would accept our Supplementary Order Paper in line with her Supplementary Order Paper which gives seven years—to go well if it's that simple and we need to find the most simplified answers and the way of achieving this why would the Minister not exempt those users until the point where we get to the seven years. And if simplified answers are not found we could have a relook at it because what most people fear when they see legislation coming out of this House is that it comes out of the piece of legislation and then it's sent to regulators to make regulations and despite everything we read and hear and people say about how simple this is going to be we have no guarantee at this point that it's going to be simple.We have no guarantee at this point that it will be simple for those end users and what I can see—so we have farmers supplying farmhouses we have marae supplying small groups of people we have bach owners supplying other bach owners we have people supplying their neighbours and people have been very good at organising water systems that work in small communities. And what I can see people going when they read this and they look at the threats of how much they're going to get fined and all the rest of it—they're just going to pick up those water pipes and say "Look sorry I'm just going to supply my own place from now on"—because you can—"I'm not going to supply those three baches down the road." or "I'm not going to extend my water." especially if there have been subdivisions. We're going to have lots of disputes about who's actually the person at the end of the day who's supplying the water. So there are going to be some real problems here and what will happen at the end of the day if those people don't supply the water that's going to be left to the councils on top of the three waters legislation.So National cannot support this bill this afternoon and thanks for the opportunity to speak."