Grigg NicolaNICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise in absolute opposition to this Water Services Legislation Bill and I was struck by a thought this morning as the whole Chamber gathered to listen to President Zelenskyy's address. I thought here is an example of a leader that is relentlessly focused on the issues that really matter to his people in stark contrast to a Government we have here focused on ideological nonsensical irrelevant projects that will do nothing to enable the lives of the people of New Zealand. This just feels like a terrible terrible recurring dream. Just last week the House passed the Water Services Act—it's now in law; it's an Act—and three hours later they drop a 200-page effective amendment bill to it. They've been beavering away in their back offices. They didn't have the guts to bring this to Parliament in the first place in the first piece of legislation. There are 275 amendments in this bill to the original Act that has already been passed. It is a gutless attempt to hide something from the New Zealand public on this the last day that Parliament is sitting for the year. So they hope to sweep it under the carpet and hope that nobody will notice it's occurring. I see the press gallery is empty. No one's here to even report on this stuff so it's up to us on this side of the House to actually educate the people of New Zealand as to what this Government is trying to sneak through while everyone goes away on their summer holidays.This bill more than doubles the length of the Water Services Act. It takes it from six parts to 12. It is an absolute insult to those 88000 New Zealanders that made submissions on the first bill. They have been roundly ignored. Every party in this House except Labour objected to that earlier bill. They know it is wrong and they are once again objecting to this bill and we stand strongly in condemnation to it as well. This bill makes for some shocking reading. It's an underhanded attempt from Labour to make changes to its own legislation and the big thing it didn't want to talk about in the first bill is what is contained in here—it is the pricing of water. It is so cynical from Labour to be bringing this up on the last day of Parliament. But it's not just the pricing; you go through this stuff and see just the layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy and complexity and plans and compliance and it is entirely convoluted. I just had a look at the regulatory functions in the section on regulatory functions. There's a list of plans and bureaucracy. We've got drinking-water management plans stormwater management plans stormwater network rules service agreements with bill payers network connections requirements of network protection rules notification requirements and so on and so on and so on. But the best part I think is the enforceable restrictions on drinking water for the use of water conservation. That means fines". The enforceable restriction on drinking water—the New Zealand public can read that as "fines". It is a revenue-gathering vehicle for this Government that was too gutless to bring it out in the first piece of legislation. It goes on to say it is now going to foist upon councils the responsibility of taking on the on-charges of the on-payments because they couldn't get themselves sorted to do it themselves. Let's be very clear: Labour has deliberately avoided talking about these technicalities. I think however though in the short time I've got left the most gobsmacking section in this is the punitive language around compliance and enforcement. This bill creates a director of compliance and enforcement for each of the entities it decrees that each board will create a compliance and enforcement strategy it's going to have compliance officers with what I read as stronger powers than the New Zealand Police. In their comprehensive offence and infringement regime it's going to issue them with issues for directions of compliance orders remedial action and ways to recover costs. Can you imagine if the New Zealand Police were given these sorts of compliance tools? This bill is a complete mockery to the 88000 New Zealanders who made a submission on the first bill. It's already been set in law. The National Party has said we will repeal it in Government just like we will the first piece of abominable legislation."