Court Simon; O'Connor Greg; McAnulty KieranSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. It's wonderful to have a different perspective from the Associate Minister Kieran McAnulty. So I just want to offer ACT's helpful suggestions Mr McAnulty to this dilemma of what on earth a Te Mana o te Wai statement means and who should give it and how we might define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. What I would propose Minister McAnulty is that if the Government were to adopt ACT's Treaty principles which I'm going to describe in a moment and take up and support the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 291 where we proposed to replace the definition of Te Mana o te Wai" in the Act with actually Te Mana o te Wai means "the objective of keeping freshwater in a safe and suitable condition". And if you look carefully Minister at SOP 291 that definition of "safe and suitable" is taken directly out of the Health Act. Imagine a Government that's so efficient that when it's designing new legislation it adopts definitions that already exist. So Minister the ACT Party offers you Supplementary Order Paper 291 which simplifies the definition of "Te Mana o te Wai" and aligns it with safe and suitable water in terms of the Health Act. Secondly Minister I want to come to the proposed Te Mana o te Wai statements for water services. This is clause 6. ACT proposes—and we think this would get widespread support from communities around New Zealand. In fact for members like Helen White and Anna Lorck who have expressed concern that you know the constituents who speak to them are really worried about Labour's prospects in 2023 if this three waters bill goes through—look if the Minister and the Government were to adopt ACT's proposed amendments set out here in SOP 295 which says that Te Mana o te Wai's statements could be "provided to a water services entity" of course by mana whenua but also by a local community—a local community—which includes everybody who lives in a place that needs drinking water that discharges waste water and that also has to manage stormwater properly. And those local communities could be rural communities as my colleague Mark Cameron has pointed out or urban communities. For example a new subdivision in Auckland called Three Kings which is built partly in an old quarry and where the playing fields which are delivered by the developer and which will transfer into the ownership of Auckland Council on completion of the development—those rugby and soccer playing fields are also the blue-green soak pit for stormwater overflows when it rains heavily and then that stormwater will discharge into the ground via a massive soak pit and underground lava tunnels that run out into the harbour. So when we're thinking about integrated catchment management Minister we're thinking about what's important to local communities. ACT's Supplementary Order Paper 295 would allow local communities such as the people who live in Three Kings to also make a statement to a water services entity about what's important to their local community. Now I want to come to the really really difficult thing that this bill proposes. It's that all persons performing exercising duties functions or powers under the Act will have to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi—those undefined principles which have resulted in regulatory creep and a cultural veto for many vital projects that have to apply for consents—and there is no standard; there is no benchmark to understand what these principles are. This is what ACT offers you Minister. Three principles—the New Zealand Government has the right to govern and the New Zealand Government alone; the New Zealand Government will protect all New Zealanders' authority over their land and property; and all New Zealanders are equal under the law with the same rights and duties. Now that's what we think the three principles in the Treaty of Waitangi say in English and in Māori. So Minister would you agree to adopt those principles and put them in the Act?CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Just from the Chair I've been watching this debate. I was in the Chair last night; I watched for an hour. There is a lot of repetition coming in here and different members saying the same thing does not constitute a new argument. So just be aware members. Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Associate Minister of Local Government): Thank you Mr Chair. In response directly to Mr Court's contributions many of the issues that were raised have been addressed already in this committee stage. But we finally got to a question and the answer is no. To complete the response to Mr Bayly's contribution—apologies there were just a couple of matters I wanted to look into in more detail for you. The first bill does contain a process to allow councils and establishment entities to work through water services assets and liabilities. But specifically to the transfer arrangements that will be included in the second bill."