Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. On behalf of the Green Party access to healthy water is a fundamental right. It's our responsibility as lawmakers and representatives of the people of this country to ensure that everyone has access to healthy water that it is treated as commons and a public good. We have learnt not just in Aotearoa New Zealand but around the world that when communities work together to manage access to water it works better. It's something that—it's fundamentally part of the commons. Throughout the process of the water services repeal the Green Party raised many many concerns and many facts that were coming from the communities most affected and we sought changes. We won many of those changes not all of them. Ultimately we oppose the bill which is passing though under urgency today because it is going to create more uncertainty for councils and communities. While the reform wasn't exactly what the reform would have been in a Green Government—or even with a Labour-Green Government because we didn't have one of those—the reform was at least setting a clear direction and as the previous speaker the Hon Kieran McAnulty said they listened very carefully to what local communities and their representatives were asking for and they did make many changes. I certainly saw—with people who were lobbying me as an infrastructure and energy spokesperson last term—that there were concerns about certain bills but most of those concerns were addressed if not through the select committee process through the committee stages of the bill. In the final stages of the bill many many of those concerns were addressed.The reality is this Government believes its own hysterical rhetoric that it stirred up around these reforms. It has stirred up absolute hysteria and fear and made it divisive despite it being a relatively sensible proposal because when those parties were in Opposition they were desperate to do anything to get people to vote for them and to attack the Government of the day. There was not a constructive Opposition; the constructive opposition was from the Green Party. We got some wins. There's still huge opportunities to do things better; we maintain that stormwater should rest with councils not the independent entities. That's because stormwater is so fundamentally related to decisions around urban planning and transport infrastructure. There are huge opportunities to do things better—like low-impact development green infrastructure which not only brings nature into our cities but it works with nature to take the pressure off the pipes and it ends up being much more cost effective. We need to make sure that our institutions are set up in a position where they can make the right decisions in the planning rules and in the transport infrastructure and in the rules around development so that we can take full advantage of low-impact development. That's something that I was hugely experienced with—before I came to this House—as an urban planner and I'm sorry to see that it hasn't been more embraced in New Zealand. But it was picked up in the final legislation as something that entities should be looking at and it's one of those areas where there's a win-win. There's a better environmental outcome and a lower fiscal cost and when those two things go hand-in-hand—and a better urban amenity for those living in our towns and cities—of course we should be embracing them and ensuring that organisations that are looking after the infrastructure aren't just totally focused on concrete and pipes when in fact working with nature can get better outcomes and take pressure off those reticulated systems especially where they are combined. Of course there is a need to repair and improve pipes. Let's go back to the origin of the crisis that we're now seeing unfold in Wellington in my electorate of Rongotai in my neighbouring Green electorate Wellington Central and I've seen just today in Auckland. There is a crisis of under-investment in the horizontal infrastructure. Let's be honest about what caused that. It is 30 years of a neo-liberal ideology that said we should try to keep taxes low and spend as little as possible. It was subsequent central governments pushing more and more responsibility on to local councils without ever offering the proper funding for them to carry out those responsibilities. Now in Aotearoa New Zealand one of the lowest share of national revenue gathered is actually gathered by and spent by local government. In the countries we like to compare ourselves to they spend more on infrastructure. They tax in a fairer way. They have capital gains taxes they have inheritance taxes. They don't let the wealth accumulate with a small number of people over multiple generations because they know we all benefit and we're all better off when we collectively use our resources in a way that benefits us all. I've lived in other countries so I can speak to this with particular lived experience; it's possible to do things much better. But in order to do that we have to address the unfairness of our tax system we have to ensure that local government is receiving enough of the national revenue to be able to invest in the infrastructure and to undertake the responsibilities that we expect them to undertake. Unfortunately out there in the debate we see a lot of misinformation—a lot of misinformation—where people conflate investment in complete streets that will allow our kids to get around our neighbourhoods under their own steam that would help reduce congestion—things like protected bike lanes and safer speeds around schools; that somehow that's really high cost. That's absurd. That is an absurd statement because it is the lowest cost highest value transport investments we can make and we know this from many many economic evaluations. On top of it people are saying Well don't spend money on the bike lanes we need to focus on the pipes." We're comparing maybe $10 million on bike lanes with $10 billion needed on pipes. Cutting the investment in our transport infrastructure for our neighbourhoods is not going to fund the pipes. It's not going to address the issue. On top of it it's going to make transport worse. I say to those living in rural areas: nobody is asking people in rural areas to take public transport or ride bikes where it doesn't make sense. No one has said that. What we are saying is spend the money and do the sensible investments in the cities to solve the urban transport problems in the cities and then we have more money to spend on the roads in the rural areas.Because what you will find is that the National Party the National-led Government is spending the vast majority of the money on highways in the cities in the very places where they are the most counter-productive. To say that speed bumps and speed management and red-light cameras and bike lanes are the cause of all our problems is just utter absurd nonsense. It's coming from a Minister who is extremely inexperienced in life and who frankly believes his own hysterical rhetoric because he is an extremist. The Minister of Local Government the Minister of Transport Simeon Brown is an absolute ideological extremist who would fit in with the Republicans in the United States campaigning against access to reproductive health for women at university. He doesn't know. So he says he cares about cost-effectiveness and fiscal responsibility but it is not there in the priorities of the National Government. It is not there. Show me the numbers. Show us the numbers. If it is true that the Government cares about fiscal responsibility let us see it in the priorities for transport investment. Let's see it in the priorities for investment in infrastructure. Because one thing I know to be true is you get what you pay for. If your focus is not spending money and—oh wait oh hold on sorry returning money to landlords so that they don't pay their fair share of tax we are not going to be able to raise the revenue to invest in the infrastructure we need long term. And we can dress it up and talk about council-owned council-controlled organisations and public-private partnerships and all of that all the different financing mechanisms. Fundamentally if you don't raise enough revenue to invest in the infrastructure we all pay for it. We're all paying for the short-sighted decisions of the last 30 years which was very much driven by an environment that said "We should try to keep taxes on the wealthy low. We shouldn't have a capital gains tax we shouldn't have an inheritance tax. We should let wealth accumulate in a small number of people who become absurdly wealthy and then they can use their enormous wealth and power to influence politicians". DEPUTY SPEAKER: Now we are straying from the bill. Back to the bill please.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: We oppose this bill because fundamentally it is creating uncertainty for councils at a time when potentially there are tweaks and things that could be made better about the model that was put forward and the Greens would support that. We don't need a wholesale repeal of the model. We'd like to see some actual constructive input rather than hysterical rhetoric that's trying to stop councils from investing in things that communities genuinely need. The reality is that our local government needs much more sustainable and generous funding in order for communities to be able to make the sensible long-term decisions particularly to deal with the climate crisis which is not going away."