Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's an absolute privilege as a Southlander to speak on this bill. I think as others have alluded to what we are looking at here is how the Gore District Council will be transferring the ownership of the Ōtama water scheme to its local users. For those who haven't visited our part of the country it's a really beautiful place to drive through to visit but it's also heavily reliant on our primary industries and so getting our water supply for stock and for those living in our rural communities is absolutely essential.So I think on the one hand that what this story is about is a local community who've invested in this significant community resource over many many years. But it's also a local community that's also thinking about the transfer of this water scheme in the context of the findings of the Havelock North drinking-water inquiry and thinking about the impacts of that on public health.So just going back to what Mark Patterson was talking about in terms of the origins of the scheme it was developed in the 1970s as a result of the concerted efforts and input of the local farming community who contributed in cash and in kind. And then also some extra funding support came from the central government and also alone raised by the former Southland County Council. But since its beginning the scheme has always been run and overseen by a committee that's reflected the wills of the local users and also has had input by a local councillor.What's been happening though is more recently the Gore District Council has been responsible for maintaining and operating the scheme on a day-to-day basis but those operations have always been funded by the committee as a result of funding coming through from local users. I think that's a model that's worked reasonably well but the problem is when you then start thinking about how we can invest and take this scheme further then the issue of ownership has come up. This is something that's happened in the last couple of years because if you think about significant investment it's really important to actually understand who owns the scheme.In this situation both the local users who've invested over many many years and the council had differing understandings of that so what's happened in the meantime is that the Gore council has assumed the legal responsibility for the scheme. But what it did was it then went to the users of the scheme and commissioned an interim referendum and that referendum had a really high turnout. So about 75 percent of the scheme users participated in that referendum and 76 percent of those users voted in favour of transferring the ownership to the committee and the local users. So as a result the Gore council has undertaken to support water users in transferring that ownership.But the problem—and this is the reason why we're here today—is that section 130 of the Local Government Act 2002 prevents a local council from transferring a water scheme to anybody apart from another local government organisation if there's more than 200 users of that scheme. In this case we're looking at over 220 households plus some schools and a marae who are users of this system. So why we've got this bill here is to facilitate that transfer.What the bill outlines is that process. There are three kind of broad categories of what has to happen. The first is that they have to consult the medical officer of health. They have to develop a transfer plan. And then here has to be another referendum based on all that information. I think the thing is that consulting the medical officer of health is really really important because what we've had is a scheme that was predominantly servicing stock over many years. It has now come on board and it's actually servicing a large number of households as well as children and schools and a local marae. So getting that right in terms of the drinking-water quality is absolutely crucial.As a result of the Havelock North inquiry the council undertook a review of the adequacy of the water scheme last year and found there was significant risk for contamination. So as of May the water system and source has been chlorinated so that there's that extra protection for users. There's also a range of other requirements put in place to make sure that the committee has the capacity to be able to implement and deliver that scheme over a prolonged period time—over the next 30 years.As a result of that referendum indicating support from users we're very happy to support this bill going through to select committee. We also understand that the local marae has supported this and so we're very happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.