Kedgley Sue: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4367] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill but we will listen very closely to submitters from around the country. Our basic position is that water is fundamental to our health and well-being and as such making water quality standards legally enforceable seems to be important. We think we do need more than a voluntary scheme to enforce water-quality standards when they are fundamental to our health and well-being. We note that the bill although not creating a strict liability offence for breaching standards at least introduces a duty to take reasonable steps to supply water that meets the minimum standards. 
One of the objectives of the bill is to ensure that all drinking-water suppliers have public health risk management plans. That seems to us to be perfectly reasonable and not too onerous. The aim is to ensure that drinking-water suppliers take all practicable steps to comply with the minimum drinking-water standards. That does not seem to us to be too onerous either. We note that Local Government New Zealand generally supports a minimum standard for drinking-water quality but is concerned that suppliers in small and rural communities could have difficulty in complying with the bill. That organisation basically says that the requirement that water suppliers take all practicable steps provides flexibility for small and rural suppliers because a failure to comply with the drinking-water standards does not necessarily mean there is a failure to comply with the legislation. As Barbara Stewart mentioned there is a timetable—it is a phased-in approach there is an agreed process for remedying deficiencies and so on and so forth. I think that all of those provisions seem perfectly reasonable. 
Another thing we are particularly pleased about in this legislation is that it establishes a duty on suppliers to provide an adequate supply of drinking water. We think that is very important. It is a provision that has never existed before and as I have said water is fundamental to our health and well-being. Of course as we continue to pollute and exploit our natural resources and as we face potential threats to water security—such as climate change—it is important that all New Zealanders have enough safe water to drink wash with and prepare food with and that that right be protected. So we are particularly pleased that it is being enshrined in legislation and we think that is absolutely fundamental. 
We will be interested to hear more about the suggestion that a reasonable step that a council could take may be to make submissions under the Resource Management Act or the Local Government Act 2002 or to contribute to the protection of a source of water by planting trees. We wonder what will happen if having made those submissions and planted all those trees the water is still substandard or becomes substandard. Will it mean that some New Zealanders will be left without clean safe water because councils will be able to have the loophole of just making submissions and planting trees? We have some concerns about issues like those and we will listen carefully to submitters on the bill. 
We have another concern which is about the ability of the Minister to use new section 69O of the principal Act to require fluoridation as a new water-quality standard. Under new section 69O “Minister may issue adopt amend or revoke drinking-water standards’’ which is inserted by clause 7 any matters relating to drinking water that may affect health may be specified. Until now the decision on whether to fluoridate or mass-medicate our drinking-water supplies has been made by local government under provisions set out in Part 7 of the Local Government Act 2002. We have concerns that the provision in this bill could be used as a back-door national standard—as a way to override the decisions of local communities as to whether they want to fluoridate their water. 
Barbara Stewart talked about fizzy drinks and the importance of trying to encourage people to drink water instead of such drinks. We think the way to tackle dental health in this country is through dental hygiene through getting fizzy drinks out of schools and by reducing the amount of sugar in people’s diets not by fluoridating the water. Increasingly controversial and contradictory evidence is coming through about whether fluoridation actually works. Most of Europe does not have it. Are Europeans’ teeth worse than New Zealanders’? No they are not. The Swiss did a major investigation of studies on fluoridation and concluded there was no conclusive evidence that it works. So let us not rush into water fluoridation. Let us save the money from the water assistance fund and put it towards helping to improve the quality of our water not towards mass-medicating us with fluoride.  
The other issue we have talked about is how many people in New Zealand are being made ill by water. We have had a few little examples of that here and there. Someone said that $15 million a year is spent on water-quality diseases. Well we are actually spending an estimated $70 million to $90 million on campylobacter which is a serious epidemic in this country and makes 100000 New Zealanders sick every year. What are we doing about that? Virtually nothing that I can see. Scientists estimate that at least 50000 New Zealanders are becoming sick because of the chicken that they eat. What are we doing to clean up the slaughterhouses to reduce the amount of contaminated chicken? Virtually nothing as far as we can see.  
We have known about the campylobacter problem for years and we are doing virtually nothing about it. In fact we are ignoring the Food Act which states that we cannot sell contaminated food. We are selling contaminated chickens every single day—millions of them—and doing absolutely nothing about it. So I agree with some members who have said that maybe the priority is being given to water-borne diseases when they pale into insignificance in comparison with other diseases such as campylobacter which is a genuine epidemic—and a preventable epidemic—that we could do something about. We hope the Government will do something about it.  
I have another little issue about water tanks. Will we find as a result of these standards that people cannot have water tanks because they may not meet a particular standard? As water becomes more scarce particularly in certain parts of New Zealand I think we will need to encourage people to have water tanks. I would be concerned if the provisions of this bill effectively meant that people could not have water tanks in New Zealand.  
So we do have quite a lot of concerns about this bill particularly about the fluoridation issue and about some of the compliance issues that have been raised. But overall I think that nobody could sensibly argue that drinking-water standards should be voluntary. Surely they are so fundamental to our health and well-being that we need to have basic minimum standards that we all have to comply with. It is not fair that some people in some parts of New Zealand have complying water supplies and others do not. We will be supporting the bill and will listen very very carefully to any suggestions—in particular from local government—with a very open mind. In general we think there really is no alternative to regulation. We cannot have something as important as our water-quality standards be entirely reliant on a voluntary scheme.