Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. The ACT Party has a differing view. It's here in the report back to the House from the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I do want to thank the officials for the efforts they made to respond to the many questions that the ACT Party had about the legislation. I also want to acknowledge the hard work of Ingrid Leary as chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee because she had a very difficult job to do—to inquire about all the flaws in the legislation which was legislation proposed by her own Labour Party and do it in a way that was even-handed and allowed for the best possible discovery of the issues with this bill. So it's wonderful to see that in Parliament through parliamentary process there can be an even-handed approach to assessing the costs and benefits of legislation.On balance ACT will be opposing the legislation but we do agree there's a need for an economic or infrastructure regulator. What is the problem to solve? The problem to solve is that for decades local government has failed to invest in infrastructure in a way that keeps up with growth and maintains the assets that they own and that the Local Government Act already requires them to maintain and to provide for to make provisions for to renew and replace as infrastructure ages.So the ACT Party engaged constructively throughout the entire three waters reform process and we continue to engage constructively with officials with submitters who came to the Finance and Expenditure Committee in an attempt to discover how to make a regulator of infrastructure assets work.Now the problem is no action has been taken by this Government or previous Governments to enforce the law. When it comes to the Local Government Act councils have not been following the law. Some of them might know where the pipes are broken. They might know where the waste-water pump stations are failing and leaking into waterways. But the Government—central government—hasn't used any carrots or any sticks to get them to follow the Local Government Act provisions which require them to maintain their assets and make provisions. And yet here we have a whole reform programme designed to solve a problem that the law says should already be solved. Remarkable. Imagine that. So the current system is not up to scratch. This Government's reforms will not help. In fact they're likely to make it worse.The Government has established the Commerce Commission in the role an awkward role of having to be a market regulator that's not just regulating a market—in fact they're not regulating a market at all. There is no market for a monopoly water services provider. There is no market for somebody to come and lay an alternative water pipe in your street and supply water to your house.This is a monopoly so the Commerce Commission is required to regulate a public service and regulate infrastructure—infrastructure quality mind you; not infrastructure investment not infrastructure pricing not weighted average cost of capital but the quality of infrastructure provided for the money that water service entities will allocate. But they don't have the competency of the tools to carry out that role.We've heard that they're proposing to hire up to 25 people to establish a unit to act in this regulatory role and yet there other organisations that already do this within Government. The Office of the Auditor-General already audits local government councils against their long-term plan and whether they are meeting their objectives whether they are in fact investing in infrastructure to meet growth fulfilling their obligations to their communities and doing what they say they do. The Auditor-General often reveals that they're not and yet the Government hasn't taken any action against local councils as I've pointed out under the Local Government Act to rectify that.But the most awkward thing of all for the Commerce Commission and for the people who work there is that this piece of legislation requires them to become a regulator of tikanga Māori. How is it possible that if you're an economic regulator and an infrastructure regulator you are required to determine whether a water service entity is respecting the Treaty giving effect to Treaty obligations and Te Mana o te Wai? Well how on earth are they supposed to do that? Te Mana o te Wai relies on a spiritual belief in mauri or the life force of the water—water comes from some heaven and ends on Earth and has a life force. I mean anyone who's seen the Star Wars trilogy or the prequels or the sequels would be familiar with the term life force" but who knew that in 2023 an economic regulator of water infrastructure is going to be required to work out whether water companies are fulfilling their obligations not only to work out whether these entities are meeting their Treaty settlement obligations—potentially as having some function of the Crown—but also whether they're taking care of the life force of the water. As far as I was aware as a civil engineer infrastructure is pipes manholes drinking-water treatment plants waste-water treatment plants stormwater overflows culverts and all of those things. The water that flows in them is only fit to drink fit to flush or fit to use for industry. As far as I'm aware there is no engineering of scientific test for the life force or the mauri of the water.While it is entirely acceptable that one culture in New Zealand believes that water has a life force it is completely unacceptable to require infrastructure regulators or economic regulators to have to take account of spiritual matters when they're working out whether people are paying a fair price for water.Then we get to the next problem with incorporating Te Mana o te Wai in the way water infrastructure is managed. Te Mana o te Wai through applying a life-force test actually means that instead of just fixing up the pipes and the waste-water discharges to meet an ecological test—are the fish in the stream OK; is it safe to swim in is the water safe to drink?—they will have to platinum-plate cultural-plate a tikanga cost on to water infrastructure. Nowhere else in the developed world would a society impose this cost on to households on to business and on to New Zealanders present and future.This bill is a recipe for a decline in New Zealand society. ACT supports the three waters reform objectives: to deliver high-quality water infrastructure to enable growth to enable land to be serviced for more affordable housing. There's no good in putting through legislation that entrenches excessive costs in providing water infrastructure to new housing new subdivisions or to parts of our existing cities where we want to build up say around public transport hubs or around town centres. It's very very expensive already to build network infrastructure in those locations without adding a spiritual dimension to decision making around water. This will be impossible for the Commerce Commission to regulate. They're going to spend time and money they're going to hire people and unfortunately for the Commerce Commission and any individuals who take up these roles should there be a change of Government this bill the parts of it that relate to tikanga and Te Mana o te Wai and all of those metaphysical things will be repealed and those roles will be made redundant.It's not just ACT saying that this piece of legislation doesn't work. I can quote from Water Magazine the July/August issue where a gentleman by the name of Andrew Stevenson who's worked for the Commerce Commission and is a specialist in regulating infrastructure says that water services providers will have to publish asset management plans which actually don't meet the commission's specifications as set out in the bill. They won't align these asset management plans required by this legislation; they won't align with local government or similar financial systems as the regulator is focused on different outcomes and applies different principles. Imagine that—three years of talking about water reform and this legislation the last bill in a series of four pushed through by Labour today under urgency doesn't even address the most basic issues about how you align the need to invest in infrastructure with the regulator whose job it is to oversee whether that investment lines up with the land use planning and with the need to provide water infrastructure for affordable homes and so businesses can access water for business. We will oppose this bill."