O'Connor Greg; Webb Duncan; Mahuta NanaiaCHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Part 5—Brooke van Velden: Mr Chair.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Oh I'm sorry. The member needs to call. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Chief Whip—Labour): Point of order. With respect Mr Chair the vote was being taken. CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): No I hadn't completed it so the member can have the call. But just—please call. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. I was hoping that the Minister might be able to just elaborate a little bit about the monitoring function and the powers of the Government in regards to the monitoring function because we were talking a little bit about where you've got the department which has a different role again to the Minister appointing a Crown review team but at the same time it seems like there's an awful lot of bureaucracy here as to at what point different entities start getting involved. I noted here that in clause 169 it says that The Minister must appoint a department to be the monitor." so we've got constant monitoring happening from the departmental level and then the Crown review team may be appointed by the Minister if the Minister suspects that something has gone wrong—that there's been a problem. But in clause 174 it starts talking about what does it mean if there could be a problem and one of the problems it identifies under clause 174(b)(ii) is that there's a significant failure by the entity to give effect to the Government's policy statements "issued by the Minister in section 129;". So I've gone away to look a little bit at how that refers to clause 129 and it says that "The Minister may issue a Government policy statement on water services." But then going into detail on that that says that it refers back to clause 11. Now in clause 11 it is talking about what the objectives of the water service entities are. So under this Government policy statement you could be talking about things like mitigating the effects of climate change protecting and promoting public health and—importantly—enabling planning processes growth and housing and urban development. But of course all of these are from the Government side rather than from any council side or a local community side and so it appears to me that we have got a Government getting increasingly involved in local planning and local issues. Is it possible then that we could end up in a situation where the local council actually has no control at all over their own water service entity because not only is there a department that they didn't ask for overseeing them and monitoring them but you then have the Minister getting involved and putting in place a Crown review team because they are not doing an adequate job of the Government's policy statement and enacting the Government's policy statement? So how is it possible that we can have any local voice about where local town planning wants to take place or where housing and urban growth wants to take place when it's really then become an issue of the housing Minister and the environment Minister and all of those things interconnecting and overriding any of the water service entity board? I think there are a lot of people who would be really concerned that that means in effect that everyone will be just doing what the Government is wanting to do with a Government policy statement rather than what the local council and people who are in charge of the water service entity want to see in their local community. Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I realise that the member might not have been here when I opened this particular part but when I said that the functions in Part 5 mirror the existing—well some of the mechanisms in the Local Government Act 2002 the Department of Internal Affairs oversees councils as it currently stands and the threshold in order for the Minister to intervene is quite high. That threshold in this bill is clause 174. It is a very defined set of actions or considerations that must be taken into account before the Minister can intervene on those three layers and that level of intervention is proportionate to the problem that is identified and needs to be resolved. That sits outside of the two other regulatory aspects which I've explained to the committee. This won't be overreach in terms of the role of Government but this is a necessary system oversight role that should be taken in relation to ensuring that the water service entity complies with its functions as set out in the legislation much like councils do in relation to the Local Government Act 2002."