Mackey Moana: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Mackey Moana: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am very very pleased to stand in support of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill in this second reading in the House and what an extraordinary debate we have had so far. It is very telling that with nearly every other party in the House supporting this bill National members have decided they want to play politics with it. They want to be able to go around next year saying that Labour has put up the cost of people’s rates and what they are forgetting is that we are actually dealing with the public health of some of our poorest communities and some of our poorest New Zealanders. I would like to hear the next National speaker tell the House what dollar value National members would place on the public health of these poor New Zealanders before those members would suddenly be willing to support this bill 
The Government wants to ensure that all New Zealanders on community water supplies have access to safe drinking-water just as people in urban centres in New Zealand enjoy already access to safe drinking-water. Compared with other OECD countries we do have relatively high rates of preventable illness caused in part by water-borne germs. 
Jo Goodhew 
: In part. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Apparently according to National we should not do anything because only a few people get sick from water in New Zealand. Well I want the next National speaker to tell the House how many New Zealanders have to become ill in this country from water-borne diseases before the National members will suddenly start caring about those New Zealanders and start supporting this bill. The dollar value and the number of New Zealanders are what I look forward to hearing about in the next National speech. 
Currently about 71 percent of New Zealanders enjoy drinking water that complies with standards and is safe. That is very good. The suppliers of that water will be largely unaffected as a result of this bill. But some of the smaller water suppliers do not meet the standards and with some of them we simply do not know whether they meet the standards because the Ministry of Health is not able to obtain that information under the current powers that it has. This bill addresses that. This Labour-led Government is investing $154 million to help upgrade and improve small water suppliers. 
Dr Jonathan Coleman said that the subsidy scheme was useless—which means that National wants to get rid of it let us be clear about that. Maybe he should talk to the Opotiki District Council which put in place these kinds of schemes in the 1990s when there were no subsidies. The council has said to me that it would have loved to have been able to do that under a Labour-led Government—to have been able to get the subsidy for the capital works. So the next National speaker can tell us whether they will keep these subsidies or expand them. I suggest that they will not. Maybe they will give tax cuts to E. coli. Maybe that will solve it because tax cuts seem to fix everything else for National. 
We heard from National that consumers are not complaining so we should not do anything. Well consumers do not know in many cases whether their water is up to standard. I guarantee that there is not a rural community in this country who if told that their drinking water had unsafe levels of E. coli or campylobacter would say that that is OK or their first question would be how much their rates were going to be. They would say that they wanted their water fixed because healthy and safe drinking-water is a right not a privilege—especially in countries like New Zealand. 
I was talking to my colleague Jill Pettis and she informed me that in the 1980s under the fourth Labour Government the wonderful city of Wanganui enjoyed subsidies from the Labour Government for their waste water—millions and millions of dollars. What did National do the minute it came into Government? It scrapped those subsidies. So let us be clear National does not have a good record of supporting small communities—in rural and provincial New Zealand—on safe drinking-water and waste-water standards. New Zealand is unusual amongst developed nations in relying almost entirely on voluntary mechanisms for safe drinking-water. This bill goes a long way towards addressing that. 
We do as I have said have high rates of largely preventable gastrointestinal disease: campylobacter is twice the rate in New Zealand as it is in England and three times that of Australia and Canada. We do not like being beaten by Australia in anything and I think this is a particularly important area. The current state of New Zealand’s drinking- water legislation also gives little protection or deterrence against a major outbreak of disease in New Zealand. So we are also thinking ahead. Imagine what would happen if we had a major outbreak of a disease in our drinking water in this country—either deliberate or accidental—and this Government with the support of the other parties in this House had not done anything to put into place standards that allowed forward planning and public health plans in order to help us to deal with it. What would National members say? Would they say: “Well that’s OK Labour. We don’t mind that you didn’t do it because we think it would have put rates up.”? They would be on it like white on snow. They would be all over it and asking why Labour had not done anything while it had been in Government all of that time. 
Well here they sit today voting against this legislation which is forward looking and will protect the health of New Zealanders—unlike the situation we have seen overseas in Milwaukee for example where 70 to 100 people died and 400000 people became sick as a result of water-borne diseases that were unforeseen. The National members throw up their hands and say that they do not care. They say that they do not care because it does not meet their cost-benefit analysis of protecting New Zealanders’ health. 
We accept regulation to ensure the safety of food and discretionary consumer goods. There is no discretion over drinking water. Unless we want to pay ridiculous amounts for bottled water which most people cannot afford we do not have a choice. We have to have water and most people get it from a supply that they assume is safe. I think most New Zealanders do not realise that the safety around that supply is voluntary—it is completely voluntary. I think if they were to know or become fully aware of that they would want something done and they would want everyone in Parliament to vote for it. 
As I said this legislation will just bring New Zealand into line with other First World countries but it will not make it compulsory to comply with the drinking-water standards. I congratulate the Health Committee on the very good practical work it did in looking at the way in which we run the system and realising that in some places it will just not be realistic that some of these things can be enacted either quickly or indeed at all. But where that happens we need to know that there is a plan in place to deal with the possible health impacts of not complying with drinking-water standards. I think that is the least that our rural communities can expect from their Government. 
I thought it was interesting looking at the research from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research and the Dunedin school of medicine that showed that rates of illness from water-borne diseases were higher in areas where the water did not meet the standards. Dr Jonathan Coleman can stand up in the House to tell us that water is not a problem and that one gets campylobacter from chicken not water but that is not borne out by the evidence. We know that the young the elderly and the sick are particularly vulnerable; everyone may not die nor get really sick but we know that there are some New Zealanders who are particularly susceptible to these diseases. If they have other pre-existing conditions it can be fatal. 
I think that those people also deserve to know why the National Party thinks that their health is not worth supporting through this bill. It is also important to note that an estimated 70 percent to 95 percent of cases are not notified so we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg when we look at this issue. 
Jo Goodhew 
: How do you know if they are not notified? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Jo Goodhew can shake her head. She does not care about the people who cannot afford good water because they do not vote for her; that is what it comes down to. When it comes down to it—and it is not very nice—the reality is that small communities that do not have these schemes and that really cannot afford them are the poor communities that John Key used to care about when he talked about the underclass but apparently he has completely forgotten about them now. When the rubber hits the road the underclass is empty rhetoric—unless they want a nice little ride in John Key’s limousine. 
We in Labour believe that those people deserve and are entitled to the same healthy drinking-water that Jo Goodhew enjoys. That may be anathema to National but it is certainly not to Labour. That is why this bill more than any bill underlines the fundamental difference between the two major parties in this House. Labour believes that these standards should apply to everyone; National members believe as always that those standards should apply to their mates and the people who vote for them—everyone else can go to hell in a handbasket as far as they are concerned. 
I will quickly address the compliance costs. There was a  
New Zealand Herald 
 article in which Mr John Key gave a speech to the Local Government New Zealand conference in Dunedin. He cited the example of Owaka which had to install new infrastructure for drinking water at a cost of $750000 for 200 ratepayers. In fact a report from the Central Otago District Council—the actual operator of the supply—estimated the cost to fully comply with the standards will be between $10000 and $55000. 
 I expect that many of the estimates National members are using in this House are completely overblown. Many of the estimates National members are using are simply there to scare these communities. Many of the estimates are there to somehow justify National’s politicking with this bill which is about the most fundamental human right that we have in this country: the right to clean safe drinking-water—for everyone not just for people who vote National.