Robertson Grant: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: South Taranaki District Council (Cold Creek Rural Water Supply) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7176. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 Is it not rich to hear Nick Smith lecture this House on giving communities the chance to run their own affairs? This is the Minister who took away from the people of Canterbury the right to vote for their regional council and he comes to this House and he tells us that members who might oppose this bill want to take away the rights of local communities to have control over their own affairs. Have a look in the mirror Dr Smith. I know it is not pleasant but when you do you will see somebody who took away those rights. 
While we are on Dr Smith’s contribution could we not have just a little bit more generosity from Dr Smith about the fact that the taxpayer has contributed to this scheme because— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: And so many others. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Indeed but the impression being given by Dr Smith is that this was all the work of the local community nobody else has done anything there is this terrible injustice being created here and if only we had just let the local farmers run this right from the beginning right from day one everything would be fine. This has been a partnership between the local community and the taxpayer. That should be recognised and I do not think Dr Smith in his contribution did that. 
I am going to take only a short call on this matter. I was not on the select committee the Local Government and Environment Committee that heard the submissions but I do have two or three issues that I want to raise. Annette King has outlined the Labour Party’s position on the bill and has done that very well. 
Of the two or three issues that I want to raise the first of those is around process. I know that other members in the House will raise the concern that iwi have raised about the process. I am looking here at a newspaper article from the  
Taranaki Daily News 
 in 2010 that makes it clear that the last time iwi were consulted about this by the council was in the year 2000. That is a whole decade in which iwi were not consulted about the future of this scheme. That simply is not good enough. Annette King has registered that point on behalf of Labour and I want to register it again. 
In processes like this it is vitally important that the local community is engaged and in this case in particular the local iwi. They have said very clearly that their stance on this bill—and I know that we have already heard from Chester Borrows that the position of the Maori Party is in fact based solely on this point—is that the iwi are taking a principled stand and saying that they are not prepared to see this bill supported because they simply do not think they were consulted sufficiently well. That is their right but it also points to the fact that we do need a lot more work done on the way in which consultation happens on these issues. 
The second point of process that I want to raise I raised in the first reading debate and that is the way in which this proposal was put to the South Taranaki District Council the last time it was debated or when the vote was held. That was in August 2011—August last year. That was a split vote. That was a six to four vote of the council. I think we need to be very careful when bills come up as local bills to this House to acknowledge that there will not always be unanimous agreement within the local authority that sends a bill to this House and it is only fair that in the discussion of a bill like this we acknowledge that. 
I also in that first reading speech raised the fact that the people who showed up at the South Taranaki District Council to promote this to promote these ideas were Chester Borrows as the local MP—as it should be—but then Neville and Shane Ardern. It presents to me some significant difficulties when you look at the minutes of that South Taranaki District Council meeting which I have previously tabled in the House and you see the presence of Neville and Shane Ardern making statements about what might happen if the council did not vote for the bill to come to Parliament. I think we need to be very careful about the role of MPs particularly when there is a family connection. I said in the first reading that I respect Shane Ardern but I think the impression could easily be given when those two gentlemen arrive along with Chester Borrows to the South Taranaki District Council and make comments about what will happen if the council does not agree to send a local bill through. Essentially what they said was that they would find a parliamentary means of achieving the goal. That is not acceptable. That is poor process and it is the poor process that has characterised this over the last few years. 
We need to ensure that when local bills come here we have a clear and honest conversation about the community’s views on these issues. We also do not want to see members of Parliament arriving along at a meeting of a local council and making all kinds of veiled or otherwise comments about what may or may not happen if the council does not agree to put the bill before the House. 
I do not have a lot more to add to the particular situation. The Labour Party has decided to support this bill on the grounds that this will have community ownership for this water resource but I do think it is vitally important that we acknowledge that this was a joint project between taxpayers and the local authority and in the future I would like to see a far better process for consultation with interested groups such as iwi and a far more open and transparent process about what happened inside the council in terms of it coming here. There are certainly people in the South Taranaki community who do not support this and I think that should have been recognised more clearly by the Government.