Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Madam Chair. To the Minister: I have a question Minister about Te Mana o te Wai and the Treaty obligations and also clause 9A(1) which refers to (a) any rights or interests in water are preserved consistent with assurances—(i) given by the Crown to the Supreme Court in 2012; and (ii) recorded New Zealand Māori Council v Attorney-General [2013]". Look I note that the Water Industry Commission for Scotland said that it's important that regulation has to be independent of Government for this to work. So for effective regulation it has to be independent of Government.I also note that the S&P global ratings agency who did a report on the credit implications of New Zealand's proposed three waters reforms was asked by the Department of Internal Affairs to evaluate the scenarios for hypothetical credit consequences on the ratings for New Zealand Sovereign New Zealand Local Government Funding Agency and several local councils. And they noted that the entities proposed were structurally separated from local councils and the New Zealand Government.Now I note that Te Mana o te Wai—if you look at clause 6 it says it "has the meaning set out in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management issued in 2020 under section 52 of the Resource Management Act".My question is: why has not Te Mana o te Wai been specified? Why has a definition not been put specifically into this legislation instead of it being in a national policy statement which the Government of course can change at any time? Where does any certainty come from? Anyone who's looking at loaning money to any agency for three waters infrastructure cannot have certainty as to the principles on which are being relied and that this is not independent of the Government because the Government can change the Te Mana o te Wai national policy statement at any time.I note that the Minister has pointed to scale and aggregation as being the rationale for these reforms. The Government's point is to say that $120 billion to $185 billion is required over the next 30 years for water infrastructure and supposedly we're being told that entities will be in a better position to borrow sufficient capital to invest in three waters. My question is how will those entities be in a better position if they cannot provide certainty to anyone looking to loan money to those entities if the regulation is not independent of the Government and there is not certainty as to what regulation will be applied?That also points to the question which I asked the Minister last night and has not been satisfactorily answered to date. Part 1 makes it very clear that the matters of most importance are "[giving] effect to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi." Why have they not been specified? Why have they not been outlined in this bill? What are the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi or Te Tiriti o Waitangi—because it's either or here? Why have they not been detailed in this bill? Where will the certainty be for anyone again looking to loan money to these entities for those $120 billion $185 billion that Government is saying is going to be required over the next 30 years if there is no certainty as to what those principles are?Going again to the certainty—or I would say the lack thereof—is clause 9A in Part 1 which says that "(1)(a) any rights or interests in water are preserved consistent with assurances—(i)given by the Crown to the Supreme Court in 2012; and (ii) recorded in New Zealand Māori Council v Attorney-General [2013]". I note that decision is 59 pages long; it has 151 paragraphs. Why hasn't the Government specified specifically in this legislation what it means by "any rights or interests in water preserved" instead pointing to a 151-paragraph decision by the Supreme Court for people to try to wade their way through to ascertain what the Government means by that?This I would suggest is creating a huge amount of uncertainty. It certainly is not—that meaning—independent of the Government particularly because the Government can change the national policy statement on Te Mana o te Wai at any time.And why has the Government turned its mind to these risks to the entire programme it's setting in place? I would suggest no one's going to want to loan money to these entities given these significant risk factors and this uncertainty which the Government has left in this particular piece of legislation."