Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Ha ha! At least I wasn't sitting in the front row today Mr Speaker; thank you. This is a bill that is all about Auckland and says to the rest of the country Stuff you."—not you Mr Speaker; stuff the rest of us. The reason why I say that as a regional MP is that what the Government has done here is they have repealed the water legislation that went through this House under three different bills: the first two that went to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the third that went to the Governance and Administration Committee to ensure that the feedback that came from councils was heard. We came to a point where we did get to around 10 entities across the country that would be separated through balance sheet separation so that we can actually get the economies of scale needed to invest. That's what I'm going to go into in my contribution today.First of all this bill focuses solely on Auckland—on Auckland which has a Watercare model that already delivers water in a better way than any other territorial authority across New Zealand. That is fundamentally what the challenge is. I think it's been quite interesting to hear the former Mayor of Wellington talk about how bad this is going to be as colleagues have mentioned. When you look at what Wellington Water looks like right now I would not want to be standing up and using that as my contribution on how things can be done well. What we can see from this bill is there is a focus on Auckland and there is absolutely no idea about how the Government is going to deliver better water infrastructure for the rest of New Zealand.Firstly what about Northland? Who is going to go into a collaboration with Northland? We know that Northland is one of the parts of the country that has the most deprived levels of poverty in the country where there is a real challenge to invest where we have a large rural area with a very low rating base. How are they going to invest? Yes it was challenging for people to accept that Auckland and Northland would have to go together but that is what needed to happen because if we go into this parochial approach we end up with a system that doesn't deliver better safer water for every New Zealander. So I ask the Government members: how are you going to support Northland to invest when you have ring-fenced Auckland all on its own?We will see that when that legislation comes through the House if it appears about what is actually going to happen for the rest of the country. I can see everyone's heads are down all of a sudden. Nothing to heckle about here because they know—they know that this bill actually shafts Northland.As a regional MP I will be standing up for my region and all the other regions and the other region to talk about is the West Coast. The West Coast has already started having conversations with parts of my area—it might be news to Stuart Smith—about how we and Te Tau Ihu can support the West Coast because who here thinks that Canterbury's going to go and jump into bed with the West Coast on water? Absolutely no chance. The West Coast is one of the largest rural areas. Pipes everywhere multiple treatment plants that need to be upgraded and a very small number of people to pay for it. Now without balance sheet separation how do we do that? The advice from officials repeatedly Mr Foster has been that you must have balance sheet separation to be able to do the investment that you need to do.Andy Foster: You've got to have a revenue stream that makes it work.RACHEL BOYACK: And so—absolutely and I'll just quote back at you: there's no magic money tree. There is no magic money tree under this bill—there is no magic money tree under this bill. What our reform did was allow balance sheet separation so that we could get the investment needed. One of the things we see is that even Auckland's going to be worse off. They are facing a 26 percent increase. With the deal that's been struck that goes down to 7 percent but it would only have been 2 percent—2 percent—under Labour's plan.So this is a bill that is bad for Auckland but it's even worse for the rest of New Zealand. It is terrible for rural and regional New Zealand and we will see the results of that in years to come. I do not commend this bill to the House."