Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. I would like to acknowledge the last Minister's acknowledgment of rural New Zealand and that's where the acknowledgment is going to stop because Labour has an insatiable appetite for amalgamation. We've seen the centralised and controlled agenda with planning and resourcing management with vocational education and training and with healthcare in terms of centralising or planning to centralise the DHBs. We're now seeing it with the three waters reform which the Government must dump. The four regional water entities that the Government has proposed would strip power from our communities. These are assets that ratepayers have paid to own over decades. These would be surrendered from council control and bundled into new entities with virtually no accountability—four entities where people don't even realise or have any affinity to the geographical boundaries that are being suggested. And then what would councils have left to do when their water assets are taken out of their power? Tangi Utikere might understand this as a former councillor before he came to Parliament. If the water is taken away what else would councils have left to do? Oh I know that's part of the plan to grab something else and centralise further. We can see it coming. So what is a better more accessible system: water assets controlled by your council whose meetings one can turn up to or by a mega entity spanning hundreds of kilometres and multiple layers of decision makers? I know what the National Party prefer and we prefer those people in local areas to have local control. This Government grabs everything it can and what they can't grab they tie up in red tape.We talk about centralisation on one hand and then we go to the Water Services Bill which we were debating last night. The Water Services Bill again emphasis how deeply out of touch Labour are with rural New Zealand and that is why I commended the last speaker for mentioning rural New Zealand. But this is not just a rural New Zealand issue because it affects marae it affects bach owners; it doesn't just affect farmers. The worst thing about it is that this bill is not an isolated new hurdle for farmers; it's the latest in a flood of regulations that are being rained down on our rural communities.Christopher Luxon and I started a petition. We were supposed to debate the Water Services Bill on the first Wednesday that we came back into Parliament but we were locked down in the interim so it didn't happen. So instead we started a petition and we did some live streaming and we ended up doing Zooms talking to people and today that milestone of that petition has just jumped over 15000 signatures—15000 people who do not want this Water Services Bill to happen. I acknowledge Christopher Luxon who is not with us today. He is Auckland due to COVID lockdown—Stuart Smith: Restrictions.BARBARA KURIGER: —restrictions—thank you Stuart. So he wasn't able to speak on the bill last night but he has been absolutely instrumental in putting this petition together. I really acknowledge that he can't be here to speak on it but he has put a Supplementary Order Paper together and he has put that together to ask that we restrict the regulations around the Water Services Bill to those who service more than 30 water source points. That is sensible because lots of people supply other people with water and I can see those water pipes being withdrawn pretty carefully and pretty strategically before any of this is implemented so that they don't have to go through this red-tape strangulation—more of what this Government is trying to push our communities in. We used to be number eight wire people and now all we get is strangulation by red tape. Thank you Mr Speaker.