Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Mr Chair. The new question that I put to the Minister in the chair previously is: should the Commerce Commission have these new powers introduced by clause 40? That was not answered by the Minister. The question is: given that the Government has said—and we accept this on our side; it's not what we would have done——that a regulator other than the new regulator which Labour have proposed was required and it's giving it new powers in clause 40 why isn't that regulator the Infrastructure Commission?Mr Chair this is a brand new line of questions which I was trying to get to with the Minister because where the Government has proposed new powers in clause 40 unlike powers which have been given to the Commerce Commission before these are more like powers which would be appropriate with an infrastructure regulator and I gave the Minister the example of the regulated airports which do not fit within the Commerce Commission's model easily and we have now 20 years to look back at how that has been applied by the Commerce Commission and has been criticised and has been recently very roundly criticised by the two parties which are subject to that regulation.I want to give the Minister some context around this because what is essentially being proposed here in clause 40 (d) to (f) are new powers for the commission to get an external consultant or an external body to tell the Commerce Commission what regulation is required. So instead of giving an infrastructure expert the power to regulate directly—like the Infrastructure Commission—the Commerce Commission is being granted powers here particularly at (d)(ii) and (e)(ii) to ask a water services provider to get an engineer to tell the Commerce Commission what it needs to know.What I'm putting to the Minister here is: what advice has he received that the Commerce Commission is the right regulator here when he has other options? The Infrastructure Commission itself said in its recent report about water services that waste-water water and stormwater sectors should be reformed by including (a) implementing performance-based economic regulation and water quality region to ensure that water providers are incentivised to drive efficiency and deliver excellent customer service; and (b) ensure there is a clear link between the cost of providing water services and the prices that are charged to users. This is core business for the Infrastructure Commission. What I'm asking here is: what has the Minister had in terms of expert advice about why the Commerce Commission is the better regulator here than that kind of body which has been active in providing advice for the public about what sort of regulation is required? Particularly I draw the committee's attention to the new powers at clause 40(f) where it provides for in legislation a requirement that a water services provider would ascertain the expert opinion of a third party because that acknowledges that the Commerce Commission does not have this kind of advice-giving power in its core remit and would be dependent on infrastructure experts because that is not what the Commerce Commission currently does.Just in the time available to me I'd also like to raise a question around clause 35(8) which is related to that part in terms of the new powers of clause 40 because determinations made by the commission will be essentially secondary legislation. It's also an unusual power for the commission to have when it is giving determinations about the kinds of advice that it will receive. And if you look at clause 35(2) and (3) that determination can also relate to all of the entities at once which would be a more normal power under secondary legislation or one particular entity and that would be to elevate that opinion as if it were binding to one particular entity and this is an unusual secondary legislative power. It might be compared say to the IRD's power to make binding recommendations but those are not instruments of secondary legislation.So I want the Minister to confirm for the committee that that's the intention here which would be unusual and whether he can provide us with some comfort about whether there are any other examples of regulators like the Commerce Commission having that kind of power.