Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Chair. It doesn't happen very often but there are moments when you realise that there are events that happened that are shameful. And I think this is one such event.This has been a shamble and it has been a shameful episode in this Parliament. I think having coming back today to debate this after many of us spent hours in here going through on this bill with much opposition not only across this House but from the general public and to be able to have to deal with this issue today I think just shows how—what a shambles really.The issue with this is that we've heard smoothing words from the Attorney-General talking about how he opposes entrenchment. And yet as my good colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith's been saying the Labour caucus clearly agreed to entrenching this in this legislation prior to this coming to the House. It just makes you wonder how could Mr Parker as the Attorney-General have lost the debate in caucus when he's made it so clear just a few moments ago that he is opposed to and always has been opposed to entrenchment where he is the Minister responsible for these matters in the House and to have lost that debate in caucus. And yet this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) was passed by the same Labour Government. It just doesn't make sense and it just makes you wonder what in the dickens went on in that caucus and it also may draw you to the conclusions that the comments from Mr Parker must—or could—be construed as being a snow job because the comments do not reconcile with what's actually gone on.Now I also want to just turn to this issue. The Minister in her contribution—and I thank her for standing up and I hope she's going to stand up again—is saying the reason why Labour's supported this SOP of the Greens was to protect the ownership of these assets. I just want to say that I believe that the Greens have been scaremongering this whole issue and just show how out of touch they are with their whole issue about privatisation and wanting to make sure that there were further provisions in this bill.I think the first thing I would say here—many people have sort of forgotten about this—but in the bill the provisions that this relate to are set out in Schedule 4. And what people don't realise is that first thing if there is even the concept of talking about privatising the assets it requires a 75 percent majority of the regional representative group who must prior to coming to that view or that vote have talked about and talked to all of the territorial local authority owners of the water services mana whenua and also the Minister before they can decide—and then they must decide with 75 percent approval.The second thing is: the proposal to go out to the general public on it requires 100 percent approval—or unanimous approval—by all of the territorial authorities. So many of these water companies will have so-called owners or territorial councils of up to 20 22 councils. It requires unanimous agreement by all of those councils before you can even put a poll to the general public. And having got through those two hurdles it then requires the general public to approve by 75 percent. So the thought of privatising these assets is absolutely just about virtually impossible under this legislation. We've heard the Greens we've heard Labour going on in these spurious arguments about National wanting to privatise this asset". You can't even contemplate how it could possibly occur under the current bill that has been passed through and rammed through by the Labour Government.This bill—this SOP—is a shocker should never have occurred and here now we're seeing Labour backtracking. And I'll tell you why it's backtracking—nothing to do with David Parker or whatever thinking it's the wrong thing—it's because the general public and the media have suddenly said "This is wrong" and it's a political back-down. It's shameful."