Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. This repeal this evening is reckless irresponsible and absolutely a sign of the direction this new three-headed Government is taking us.It is a lot of marketing spin in the Minister of Local Government's speech which by the way totally contradicts his attitude in many other areas. Supposedly he cares about local decision-making; let's see that happen in transport. Absolutely not. Supposedly he cares about local communities but in fact as we know that is all just marketing spin put around a repeal. In fact there was a lot of good work done; there was a lot of consultation done with local councils with iwi with hapū to present a collective and informed approach for us to deal with the historic under-investment and under regulation of our water services.This is a problem that built up over decades starting probably in the 1980s and 1990s when we had the neo-liberal reforms that asset-stripped local councils and Government and led to downward pressure on the contribution towards our infrastructure from people who live in our communities and now we're paying the price. Here in Wellington we're paying the price the Chatham Islands will be paying the price—I'm the representative for the Chatham Islands as well as Rongotai south and east Wellington. The reality is that even if the reforms put forth by the last Government were not perfect—and the Green Party had a lot of constructive feedback and worked constructively and we were able to improve a lot of things—I think towards the end the process actually delivered quite a good outcome.What we heard tonight from the Minister in the committee stages was a whole lot of nothing. Who did he actually talk to? What councils has he actually consulted with? What iwi and hapū have actually been consulted with? Almost none. No they believe their own rhetoric. That is the scary thing; that is very clear. When that Minister talks he believes zealously the rhetoric of the campaign yet the things they campaigned on—as the previous speaker the Hon Kieran McAnulty quite astutely put—were contradictory promises. So they're somehow promising that it would cost less under their plan that ratepayers wouldn't be receiving this huge rates burden to deal with the decades of under-investment and you know they promised the world and we're going to see very soon that it's not come to fruition.In fact local councils now are being put in a very difficult position because they had already planned for the transition to these other entities and now they're being told that they have to put all the water services back into their long-term plan right at the last minute. Yet another example—classic in New Zealand; this has been happening for a couple of decades—of central government just putting more responsibility on to local government without the funding to support it and then blaming local government when things start to fall apart.So that's what we're seeing; we're seeing a reckless irresponsible and shallow approach to policy making that is chucking out years of work that was actually going to start to address something that everyone in New Zealand I think right now agrees is a serious problem. Because I know we're seeing the problem in Auckland we're seeing it in Wellington we've seen it in Havelock North we've seen it in Queenstown: insufficient investment in the infrastructure that's needed for clean healthy water and insufficient regulation on the part of the Government to make sure that councils were meeting their obligations. Now they have to meet those obligations but they need to be given a funding mechanism.Any time this National Government runs into a funding problem they promise that there will be some sort of private interest or some private source of funding. Well we're going to have to pay for it at some point. Somebody has to pay for it. I think it would be fair if we acknowledged that as a community we all benefit from investment in this infrastructure and we should be using general taxation to pay for some of it and we should be using user charges where that makes sense. But I don't see how repealing this legislation tonight is going to result in the kind of responsible practical pragmatic solution that we need to have. So I'm really disappointed.I think that the voters of Aotearoa New Zealand are going to be disappointed when they realise that they voted in some people who are not very serious about solving problems but are very serious about tax cuts for the incredibly wealthy and their corporate donors—a lot of action on behalf of the corporate donors but not a lot of practical problem solving when it comes to long-term infrastructure. There is a whole lot of rhetoric and I know that the Minister believes it but it is just that—it is just rhetoric. I look at the members opposite. I don't know; they want to trust their leaders but I think they're looking a bit dubious now. They're suddenly realising that actually the people they represent out in the rural areas are going to be hit with bigger rates bills because of the National Government's irresponsible approach.Let's just be honest: there was nothing divisive fundamentally about the approach of the water reforms because it was started under the previous National Government after the incident in Havelock North where people died due to lack of safe drinking water. That process started under the Department of Internal Affairs. Now what happened under the last Government was very clear: there was an organised political campaign from the right from the classic divisive politics the sort of John Ansell—what are they called? Hobson's Pledge?—types. They're the ones who bring the division. There's nothing divisive about co-governance because the previous National Government actually used co-governance and introduced it but as soon as they're not in Government they will stir up anger and division and they will use that to disrupt a constructive process. There's no such thing as constructive opposition from the National Party or the ACT Party. Maybe a little bit from the ACT Party—I apologise. Mostly from the National Party. It's not constructive opposition; it's not serious policy making and we're not going to have the solutions we need.The really scary part of all of this is that we need it now more than ever because as climate change hits—and it's coming in fast now as we saw last year with Cyclone Gabrielle as we saw with multiple flooding events—we're going to be hit by this stuff year after year and it's going to get worse and worse. And there's no plan to reduce the climate-heating pollution that New Zealand is contributing to the atmosphere. There's no real plan to put in place the infrastructure and the community resilience because the priority is to let the rich get richer let the tobacco companies make more profits at the expense of our youth—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Back to the bill. It's about water.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: It is—it is. And it's all related Madam Speaker because it's all about priorities and what the real priorities of New Zealanders are and whether it is possible for us to work together to solve our collective challenges like climate change which is going to affect water which is going to affect the way we grow food which is going to affect the way that we move around our country. All of these things are interrelated and the Green Party is standing here saying this repeal is irresponsible it is reckless and the country will have to pay for the lack of investment at some point in our infrastructure. So goodnight. Pō mārie.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members the time has come for me to vacate the Chair. The House is suspended until 9 a.m.Sitting suspended from 10.03 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday).