Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): It's a pleasure as a southerner to speak on this bill and to see it get through to this committee stage. I want to focus on Part 1 of this bill which outlines the purpose and also lists all of the scheme's assets that would be transferred. In terms of the purpose as we know the Otama Rural Water Supply scheme has had a really strong sense of community ownership from the beginning. It was developed by local farmers back in the 1970s in response to that need for a reliable stock water source. But what's happened over time is it has grown and it's now supplying over 200 households plus schools and a marae. Looking at the local governments at the moment it's governed by a committee which has got eight appointed users plus an elected councillor. The Gore District Council has assumed the legal responsibility for the scheme and it maintains its day-to-day operations but the running costs are met by the users. So where we've come to at the moment is the fact as has been mentioned that there was considerable debate about the ownership of the scheme because having put in that resource that time the local community felt that it was vested in their ownership; however the council thought it was vested in its ownership. So what this bill does is it makes that very clear. Back in 2017 the Gore District Council held a referendum of water users to see if they wanted that ownership transferred to the users and 75 percent of those users participated in that referendum and around 76 percent were in favour of transferring ownership. So the Gore District Council as a result has said that it would support that process for this to happen. But that couldn't happen immediately because section 130 of the Local Government Act 2002 prevents a council from divesting ownership of a water scheme to any other body if there's more than 200 users than another local Government organisation and that's what the purpose of this bill is. In Part 1 it basically says that it's to specify the process by which the Gore District Council must follow to authorise the transfer of the Otama Rural Water Supply to Otama Rural Water Ltd. So basically that's the purpose as outlined in Part 1.It also goes on to list all the assets that are currently vested in the council that would be part of this transfer process and that includes the land on which the scheme's treatment plants are situated the Pyramid well and pump station all the reservoirs other pump stations and all of the tanks mains valves—all the equipment associated with the water scheme. It also includes a resource consent to draw the water for the purposes of the scheme. But there was one other aspect that was added during the select committee process and that was the water treatment chlorination system itself. As a response to the Havelock North inquiry they did do an assessment of the water quality of the water scheme and it revealed that there was a risk for contamination. So as a result both council and committee agreed to chlorinate that water supply which began in May 2018. So that's been included also in those listed assets. So basically this bill in Part 1 just lays out very clearly what the purpose of this bill is and those assets that would come under the auspices of this bill. Therefore I commend this bill to the House.