Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you Madam Chair. Speaking to clause 9 the repeal of the Water Services Legislation Act I want to ask the Minister of Local Government what advice he has had and what thoughts he has on what will replace the considerable body of regulation that was included in that Act to govern the way that stormwater services are managed.What I think was really significant about those provisions in the Act is that for the very first time water entities or now the councils largely were required under the law to have a stormwater management strategy. They were required to be the ones who were responsible under the Act for this work—for the first time ever. They were required to adopt a risk management approach to stormwater networks. They were required to work with other entities like transport agencies and other infrastructure agencies and include them in their strategies and plans. They were overseen by two regulators one for the health and safety of the water another an economic regulator.That's significant because we know that there are many councils who simply haven't done the stormwater management job. They chose not to spend not to invest and the anniversary weekend floods a year ago exposed the fact that in our largest city which is home to about a third of the country's population the council for decades has simply not been doing the job of investing adequately in stormwater networks. So I'm really keen to know what advice the Minister has had on what will be the environment now for councils and what kind of accountability what kind of responsibility will they be held to in the discharge of their responsibilities.Another example of the work that went into the Water Services Legislation Act that there's now a question mark over—and I would welcome the Minister's advice on this—is that the select committee actually did a lot of work on the responsibility to manage stormwater networks in our urban areas. In many of our urban areas it is streams and creeks that make up the stormwater network; it's not always pipes. And for many of our cities particularly the ones that have had a lot of development in the last 30 years the stormwater networks are not concreted and underground; they are creeks and streams. And in my home in West Auckland it's almost all creeks and streams. When they're not properly managed the effects can be catastrophic as we saw 12 months ago.This is a problem because Auckland Council has a 2015 bylaw that says that any stream that abuts a private property or runs through it is the responsibility of the private landowner and not the council's responsibility. So they don't maintain those streams and creeks and they frequently get blocked. It's a problem because it's simply not feasible for private landowners to spend $100000 to hire a whole lot of heavy machinery to clear a stream right? So they don't do it. And we know from experience that Auckland Council almost never uses its compliance powers to remedy that.It's also completely ridiculous when you've got a stream that can literally go through hundreds of suburban private properties in a city like this. You cannot hold one landowner responsible for a blockage that is allowed to happen by a landlord a kilometre upstream. So it's an absolute nonsense. It was one of the significant contributory causes to the catastrophic flooding that happened a year ago in many parts of Auckland and these provisions apparently are being wiped clear by this repeal legislation. I am very keen to hear from the Minister what thought he's given and what advice he's taken on this matter.