Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. The ACT Party agrees that there is a problem with three waters infrastructure in that for too many decades some councils have failed to uphold their responsibilities to care for community assets to make provision for maintenance and renewals and instead have wasted money on things like painting rainbow pedestrian crossings on the road.So of course New Zealanders have lost confidence in local government and their ability to manage assets. That actually goes back to 2005 when a previous Labour Government gave councils the power of general competence which means they could do anything. Of course what did they do? Anything but asset management well. Then we come forward—we leap forward—to the current Labour Government which has given councils the instructions to focus on the four wellbeings: social environmental cultural and maybe economic.Well what should this Government have done? What should any Government have done? They should have said Focus on the infrastructure needed to support growth intensification new urban development and manage and maintain your assets. Invest in them in a way that doesn't lead to a whole lot of liabilities—like waste water overflows onto beaches for example."Let's just come back to this bill. ACT took a constructive approach. In fact we've taken a constructive approach to engaging with the Government and with officials and with submitters right throughout the three waters reform process going back to 2020 prior to the election where Department of Internal Affairs officials gave David Seymour and I a briefing on what the reforms would involve. They omitted stuff like centralisation and taking the assets without compensation. They omitted to talk about co-governance creating these awfully complex water entities with two levels of governance including giving 50 percent of seats on a co-governance entity to unelected appointed iwi Māori representatives when it didn't appear there was any justification for it.So Labour has behaved appallingly when it comes to this reform. A problem that New Zealanders from Cape Reinga to the Bluff and the Chatham Islands—whether they were involved in farming or they lived in a small town or they lived in an urban metro like I do—Ingrid Leary: Come on Simon you know more about the bill than this.SIMON COURT: —could have agreed there's a problem with three waters. Something to fix. Labour ruined that opportunity by focusing and listening to some people with some kind of misguided agenda to try to allocate decision making over water assets and infrastructure to unelected iwi Māori—for some reason without justification—and to centralise the assets and confiscate them from local councils.It turned out what we heard during consideration of this bill at select committee—which I must acknowledge was admirably chaired by Ingrid Leary in her role as chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. She enabled wide-ranging investigation of the bill and its implications and I certainly want to acknowledge her for that. But what we learnt throughout the process is that this is the implementation part of the three waters reform. Labour had no idea how they were going to implement the reforms. That's what we learnt. It was like "Holy what have we done?"What did we learn? There was no plan to integrate local government planning land use planning and the asset management functions that the water service entities were supposed to take from local councils. There was no plan to integrate how stormwater would be managed by water service entities and land use planning. In other words the planning that goes on to say where homes should and should not be built where businesses should and should not be built because of natural hazards wasn't going to be integrated into the way water services entities managed stormwater.There was no consideration of how rural water supplies which typically supply 50 or 80 percent of their water to rural use—farming irrigation stock water supply washing down hosing down—all of that water and only a few residential users. How on earth would those rural water suppliers' mixeduse supplies going to be integrated into water service entities? No idea. How was the demand for infrastructure connections meant to respond to growth when these water service entities' role was set up basically to deliver clean drinking water to residential consumers but completely ignored the fact that metros like Auckland are going to grow from 1.5 million to 2 million to 2.5 million—the volume of water required to supply Auckland's growth is enormous. It can only come from places like the Waikato River or new dams. As developments proceed they must be able to call on water connections and waste water disposal so that more houses can be built on affordable land. None of that was answered.Then we come to the point raised by the Hon Phil Twyford—a Minister some might say in a past role who could have been a genius for coming up with a National Policy Statement on Urban Development that encouraged more high-density development in our metro areas. So for example where once there were four homes on residential sections now there are 11 or 13. Like where we live—where the Hon Phil Twyford and I live—in Te Atatū Peninsula. But what the former Minister of Housing didn't allow for was the infrastructure needed to support that growth. So where we live in Te Atatū Peninsula it's true there's been housing intensification—which is welcome. But the waste water overflows from the sewage system right by our boat ramp at Taipari Strand—right next to the waka ama club the multi-sports club the rowing club. Why on earth was that not addressed when that former Minister did his colouring-in exercise and said "You can build up but we haven't taken account of or funded the infrastructure."?What was missing? What was missing? The hundreds of millions of dollars spent by building construction companies in Te Atatū Peninsula alone where I live in the past four or five years. Not a single cent of the GST collected on that revenue has gone back to local councils to fund infrastructure. What ACT says is if we want to have growth if we want to enable housing growth to respond to demand then the proportion of the revenue—half of the GST which would amount to $1.5 billion a year that central government currently collects—must go back to local government. Phil Twyford's speech sums up everything that's wrong with this Labour Government. Great at colouring in great at announcements great at press releases but absolutely hopeless at implementation and solving the hard problems.So what is not resolved? Who pays for the water infrastructure is not resolved. Is it the bulk water users? Is it people like me in Auckland? When I turn on the tap my water metre spins and every month I get a bill? That's not very common around New Zealand. You try telling people in Wellington that they're going to get a water metre and they're going to have to pay a bill. A lot of the people who live in Wellington will probably revolt. But unless you find a way to charge people for the water they use it's not possible to actually provide sustainable funding and financing.What is unresolved? Who says yes or no to development? Is it a co-governance entity? Is it a group of people who believe in spiritual and animist concepts such as "water has a life force" or mauri and that that overrides the needs for communities to have water for housing growth or farming or economic development? How would we know? The bill talks about upholding Treaty settlements. Of course ACT would support any settlement that restores property rights that have been infringed. But that does not help us understand how we provide infrastructure for growth and how these entities when they're constituted will actually be able to fund asset management.So this is what ACT says. Look it's quite simple to solve. These organisations need to be voluntary. If councils are going to be co-opted they need to get one share per 50000 residents so at least they have control. If they need revenue then they need to be able to raise that from water users. Alternatively if there's major projects they can raise it from the private sector and institutional capital and do large-scale multi - master-plan developments using private capital. All the answers are there. ACT looks forward to delivering them should we be in Government."