Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I had the pleasure of sitting on the committee on this bill. It is probably the most terrible bill I've seen in my 18 years in this Parliament. It was a complete and utter farce. It was done so quickly and there was not one inkling of taking on board what people actually submitted about the bill. It was purely done for procedural process reasons and the Labour committee members loved every moment of it. It was a complete waste of time.There is no need for this reform. The essence of what the Government is saying is that they're going to put everybody together and suddenly we're going to have this big value increase that we can fund all these great projects from. Well that doesn't make sense when the really big communities like Auckland Hamilton Tauranga and all that are really struggling around water issues. You look at the Auckland one for example: Auckland's in big trouble around water. If you looked at doing stormwater for the coast so that those beaches you can actually swim in—and some of the Labour members there the North Shore beaches you know even the ones on the east coast of the city if you could actually do that—it's going to cost billions and billions of dollars. The only place they're getting money for from this bill is poor old Whangarei District Council that's actually got a surplus. They're using Whangārei's assets to try and rebuild Auckland's water and that was replicated all through the country—all these councils that had done a great job in managing their water are now going to be subsumed for the benefit of those that haven't.It doesn't add up. So the only thing that happens is there must be a cost blowout on ratepayers. Ratepayers are going to have to pay big money once this bill goes through. The other thing is that all the costs around this bill—every single cost that came up with IT and all that—have all been pushed off until after the entities are created so that those entities have to foot the bill. There's no cost on the Government—amazing that isn't it? This is something that's going to make a massive change—IT and everything is going to cost millions if not billions and the ACT members said $2 billion or $3 billion—and it's all put off to the new entity with no liability on this Government.Now we had council after council come in and say We oppose this because they're basically asset stripping us and taking those assets away." I said to them: "Well didn't the Minister come and see you on his grand tour and engage with you?" and they said "Yes he did. But then he told us at the end 'I'm just going to do it anyway.' " There was no consultation; there was no actual regard for their views and what their communities had built up over many years so you wonder why they are doing this.There's no economic imperative because the numbers just don't stack up. There's no way that they can deliver what they're talking about from the numbers that come from council waters across the country. There's no community recognition that it needs to have this happen. The councils were opposed. So why are they doing it? The only reason is they want to enshrine co-governance of water at this stage. That's the only reason the Labour Government is doing this: they know in their heart of hearts this will not work but it does enshrine co-governance of water. That is what they know and they've been all told to be quiet to just do what they're told to do and pass this bill through the House. That's the reality of what we're dealing with here today.The best part of it was when Rachel Boyack decided she would become the union vanguard and put these new clauses in around how the unions would basically be doing negotiations and it floundered for two or three days on this issue. It was probably the most discussion that the Labour Party had and I'm sure the Minister would have had a few calls to her at night going "What the hell are you doing putting that in the bill?" But the Labour Party members were told what to do.Hon Scott Simpson: Who by?Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well the Minister completely. The Minister had no direction—there's no economic reason there's no social reason; the only reason is to enshrine co-governance. That's what we're doing here today—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member's time is up."