Williams Andrew: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8055. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I will take a call on the South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill. New Zealand First has looked at this long and hard and we sympathise with the situation of those in the Cold Creek rural water supply area. We know that this has a very long history. We are aware of the concerns of the district there in terms of ensuring that this ongoing resource is maintained for particularly the farming people in the area while at the same time making sure that the resource does not reduce in terms of its longevity and the status of it and in terms of maintaining the asset. Therefore there were some difficulties for the South Taranaki District Council in terms of that and on behalf of the ratepayers in ensuring that it was able to continue to cover the funding for and the funding requirements for the ongoing maintenance and upgrades of this particular resource. 
However there are always these sorts of situations all around New Zealand. We hear so often particularly in small provincial rural communities of the difficulties of both water and waste water and of the provision of good quality services in both those areas of water and waste water and this one is no different. However one area of concern that we have had in the backs of our minds for some considerable time is the fact that over a number of decades there has been taxpayer funding going into this scheme a subsidy support to the users. There has also been support from the former Egmont County Council which subsequently became the South Taranaki District Council in terms of public ratepayer money too to provide a level of maintenance and also administrative support for the officers and the staff of the council to oversee the scheme and provide some technical and other support for it. So it has been very much a joint venture situation with public input and with private landowner input into the whole scheme. 
With the suggestion of transferring it completely into a private company it does raise the question of whether the ratepayers and the taxpayers in the area have been adequately consulted with to ensure that they are actually comfortable with the situation—and they might be. What we are saying and what my Supplementary Order Paper 179 is suggesting is that it would perhaps be prudent and wise that rather than do something like this and get the backs up of an area of the community—and the Hon Tariana Turia said that perhaps the council could work through the issues with consultation with iwi and Maori and other interest groups—perhaps if there was a consultation process through some sort of a referendum process which our Supplementary Order Paper suggests the whole thing could actually be put to rest in a far better manner and in the interests of the whole community. Those who are affected in particular by this scheme we are confident could probably put up a good case to the rest of the district to say that they wish to do this—they wish to take over this particular asset—and they wish therefore to provide the ongoing maintenance to perhaps provide some relief to the ratepayers of the South Taranaki District. If they put up a sufficiently good argument and can convince the wider district that this was in the district’s best interests and if they had the majority support of the locals then it would be fair sailing and would not receive perhaps a level of resentment from some parts of the community. 
We do not want to step in the way of some good local people who have tried to do well by their farms and well by their local people and community there but we feel that if the wider district is not given the opportunity to at least be part of the transfer process and agree to the transfer process then we are taking away its legitimate right to have a say on an important local asset. It is a little bit like the previous bill that we had here in the House with the land down in Oamaru. Again it is along similar lines. If land is going to change if a public asset is going to change or if anything of significance is going to change in an area these are the sorts of things that there needs to be much wider consultation on rather than it being done just by a council in-house or by this Parliament. It does need to have more public input and the approval of the people. 
So reluctantly we will not be able to support this bill. We hope that the member Chester Borrows and the National Party might concede to the Supplementary Order Paper to allow a wider referendum because if that was the case and we were able to secure a wider referendum in the bill then we would be able to support the bill in total.