Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party supports the Gore District Council (Otama Rural Water Supply) Bill. I think that some of the comments that Mr Hudson made about the strong community desire to have ownership of this water scheme—that is one of the reasons in terms of the strong local support for that demonstrated in the referendum that was held that the Green Party is supporting the bill. There was a 75 percent turnout in that referendum with 294 voters and 76 percent of them voted in support of the ownership of the scheme being transferred to the Otama Rural Water Supply company.Certainly water belongs to all of us and we all have a responsibility for its management. This scheme when it was built in the 1970s in the heart of prime dairy farming country around Gore was all about providing water to the community—some 253 connections 210 farms two schools and one marae. It was built to provide a source of water for stock but over the years it has also become really important in providing potable drinking-water. Everyone wants safe healthy secure water and that's why Supplementary Order Paper 206 which my colleague Marama Davidson put and which was adopted by this House is to ensure that when the scheme is transferred there is an assessment of the ability of the company to meet regulatory requirements. It's those regulatory requirements in terms of the work that this Government is doing in response to the Havelock North drinking-water disaster to ensure that everybody's right to safe water is safeguarded. That is a useful addition to the bill and I was pleased to hear Mr Hudson endorsing that given that Ms Jacqui Dean was opposing the inclusion of the ability to meet those regulatory requirements around safe drinking-water which I found quite odd. So this bill does specify the process by which the assets belonging to at the moment the council should be transferred to the Otama Rural Water Supply company and as others have mentioned there are a number of safeguards in that. There's the one about having another referendum. The first referendum showed that there was overwhelming support for this. That needs to be confirmed in a subsequent referendum and I think it's interesting because the scheme was established with the help of a loan from the Southland County Council and with a subsidy from central government. But of course there was a substantial contribution of time energy and skill from the local community. The loan was eventually repaid but I think the community also understands that maintaining an effective and healthy water-supply comes with significant costs. The recent decision to install chlorination has some quite significant costs of over $30000 and I noticed in media coverage that because the scheme draws its water from a bore from the Mataura River and then the pipeline takes the water from the bore across the river—and that pipeline was on the Pyramid Bridge when that bridge collapsed last year—the community was looking to Environment Southland to contribute to the costs of restoration of the pipeline. So this transfer that's proposed will involve costs in maintaining an effective water-supply system but the community is prepared to take that on because they've already been investing quite a lot of effort in that and the bill is needed because of course the Local Government Act makes it very clear that you cannot transfer the ownership of water schemes without an Act of Parliament if that scheme is supplying more than 200 users. That's an important threshold in the Act because it does ensure that management of our water supplies remains the domain of councils on behalf of the wider community and that they are subject to regulatory requirements to ensure that the drinking water is safe and that's why the work that Minister Mahuta is leading around the three waters and the work that Mr Clark is involved with around improving the standards for drinking water and responding to the Havelock North crisis is so significant. This Government is committed to ensuring that we have really good management of storm water of waste water and of drinking water so that everyone can be assured of having healthy water to drink. This is a small bill but I commend the Governance and Administration Committee for the fact that they visited Gore. They heard members of the community speaking directly to them about the history of the scheme and about their desire for it to be transferred and the ownership settled. I commend the sponsor of the bill Mark Patterson for the work that he has done in channelling this bill through the House. It is a rare privilege for an MP to be responsible for a bill that does become law. So congratulations Mr Patterson. I think the bill will respond to that very strong demand that was there in the submissions in the hearings to the select committee and in the media coverage about the bill for the community actually taking full ownership of it given that they have been so active in actually building the scheme and maintaining it for several decades. The bill by just listing and setting out the process by which the transfer should happen makes sure that there is certainty and clarity around that after there has been another referendum. So it is a good bill. I commend it to the House. Thank you.