Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well I don't want to be unkind in using Glen Bennett as an example but that might as well be a valedictory speech. Someone who holds the seat of New Plymouth by a majority of 2500—on current polling he's gone. He's not the only one on the Labour Party backbenches who knows that it's exit time and time to talk to a recruiting agency. Nothing sharpens the mind like an imminent exit from this place—nothing dulls policy ambition. We know that the Labour Party has been all aflutter in their caucus this week talking about three waters saying to each other—yeah they know. You can see the response. They know. They've been saying Do we really want to do this? Is it really worth it botching this thing so that we lose our seats?"—all of those provincial seats. Paul Eagle is about to announce his mayoral run. He's less worried about it. But someone like Shanan Halbert from Northcote he'll be thinking "Is it really worth it? Is it really what I want to do to put co-governance through everything?" Is it a worthwhile goal to try and be the first country in history to achieve equal rights for every citizen and then as if engaged in some historic shuttle run to run back in the opposite direction and create different categories of human where you get seats at the table on these water entities based on your ancestry rather than being elected by your constituents? That's the problem that this Labour Party has. It's not a policy that was ever worth doing. You see there might be a problem with three waters but logically if the difficulty is that councils don't have enough money from existing ratepayers to fund the infrastructure and the fixes for the broken infrastructure neither will these new water entities—unless the Government underwrites the new entities. And if the Government can underwrite the new entities it could've just underwritten the councils and solved the problem that way. So why do we have these new water entities? Well in part because—let's tell the real secret—three waters was never about a viable solution to our infrastructure problems. It was a Treaty settlement in disguise. Didn't we just hear that from the member from Northcote saying exactly that? That's what it was all about but unfortunately—you can hear them in the Labour benches getting upset because they've been going back and forward in caucus. Here's a prediction: the back-down has begun. They've decided it's not worth losing those seats like New Plymouth for something that never stacked up anyway and so they're going to say "Oh it was never"—they're going to change the language first. They're going to say "It was never about co-governance." And then the next thing that they're going to say is "Well actually we're going to have equal representation. That's what it's about." Finally when they realise that the spin doesn't work the people don't want it and their own political careers are in jeopardy the Labour caucus will vote to abandon three waters if it hasn't already. That is what is going to happen and you heard it here first. Kiritapu Allan she is wise. She's smart. She knows it's the truth and I can see it on her face because when the ship goes down she is far too smart to go down with it for no reason whatsoever. She's one of the sensible people who I suspect has actually been saying to people that this policy three waters a Treaty settlement disguised as an infrastructure project does not make sense. It's not good public policy. It's not worth our careers. It's not worth losing our seats for because the people know that it makes no sense and the people are going to vote us out if we don't start listening to them. That's what the people are saying in the Labour Party—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! With apologies. Order! I ask the Government members—remind them that interjections are to be rare and reasonable and a barrage of shouting is not acceptable.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well there you have it. It is clearly the case that the Labour Party cannot hack it. They don't like backing down but the back-down has been voted in their caucus. It's coming and we are not going to see three waters as advertised because they've finally realised that it just doesn't stack up as a policy and it's not worth losing your seat for bad policy. That's why three waters co-governance is on the way out. Ka kite anō."